Photostream
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My Favorite Shot During My Peru Trip
This picture is worth clicking on because if you look really closely you can see us all in that tiny ass plane.
Flying Co-Pilot
making a brief but vital appearance are my knees
I didn’t actually co-pilot this plane. Intentionally. However, as you can see in the picture, my knees are dangerously close to various knobs, levers and buttons. While the labels and their functions for said knobs, levels and buttons might have been in Spanish; I quickly learned their function with each passing Nazca line.
You see, because they needed somebody last minute to fill the last seat in the plane, I was placed in the co-pilot seat that was clearly designed for somebody a fraction of my size, even with the the seat pushed all the way back, I was still all up in the control’s business. With no time to lodge a formal protest, we were quickly airborne (the propeller was already spinning as I was ushered to my seat) and I simultaneously lost my lunch (well I would have if it hadn’t already been food poisoned out of me) as my left knee quickly jerked into the red lever you see in the picture.
The red lever’s label stands for “wing flap”. The unfortunate passengers in the back of the plane might have thought this flight to be unusually bumpy due to the high winds, but I knew the real reason behind the chaotic ride. With every turn into a new Nazca line, I was thrown against that red lever causing the wing flaps to lift and the plane to suddenly jerk skyward. The pilot did a lot of turning.
Nazca Lines
Nazca is this small town in Peru that features some pretty crazy drawings in the dirt from a long time ago. For about $50 bucks you can fly in a plane a few hundred feet over them and wonder in awe and amazement that some people from a long time ago could draw in the dirt. And they could draw well. However, the highlight for me was not the lines in the dirt but the experience of flying in the plane.
Holy HUGE dune!
dunelicious
This was one of those 90 degree dunes I was talking about.
Death Proof
The driver fine tunes the machine before another heart stopping plunge.
You’ve seen the pictures of Huacachina, so you know there’s not a whole lot to do at this so called oasis. Much like the mythical Field of Dreams in Iowa, if you bring in a few huge dune buggy’s, the backpackers will come. Our driver allayed any fears that we might have had about going headlong into 200 foot tall sand dunes by telling us that after a few “mishaps” the drivers aren’t as reckless as they once were.
Burger Queen
for sure her burgers are better
I couldn’t get an actual glimpse of the queen herself, but surely her burgers were better.
Sand Dunes
those tiny specks are people
Like I mentioned below, the HUGE sand dunes in Huacachina.
Huacachina
the sun sets on a desert oasis
After making it through my first Peruvian bus experience I had to spend the night in a little town called Ica. Ica is a shithole. Which is understandable considering it had been almost completely decimated by an earthquake in 2007. But that’s not why it’s a shithole. Ica is a shithole because they’ve managed to replace all of the ordinary car horns that were working perfectly fine with car alarms and police or ambulance sirens. The drivers in Ica like to use their horns to indicate when they’re turning, when they’re slowing down, when they’re speeding up, when they want your attention, when it’s okay to walk in front of them, when it’s not okay to walk in front of them, and maybe occasionally just for fun. Which when your car can make those ear splitting sounds whenever you push a button it’s probably fun to watch everyone around you wince. Or so it seemed. I only spent one night in this quaint little town so I could escape the next day to what essentially amounted to a pond in the desert surrounded by HUGE sand dunes.
Dinner
a local delicacy
Koreans have dog and Peruvians have “cuy”, or to us, guinea pig. I didn’t get a chance to try this delicacy while I was there (having had food poisoning twice, I stuck with what I knew) but a guy from New Zealand, who had traveled the world, extensively, and was big into risk taking, took a bite out of one and stopped. I guess they make better pets than dinner.
Welcome to Peru
workin' hard for the money
I’d already been in Lima a few days, and it wasn’t until I was about to leave that I finally pulled out my camera. I guess I wasn’t that inspired by the Miraflores neighborhood I was staying in, or was tired of the hassle of carrying around a huge DSLR everywhere I went, but I’m glad that I got the chance to relax on a “direct” bus to Ica where it was as easy to just stick the camera out the window and snap what I saw. In America, you’ve got the bums washing your windows with newspaper and soapy water, but in Lima you get about four or five kids together, do a quick tumbling routine and then refuse to move until you’ve collected enough money. Shrewd but effective.
Finally!
This is what Mt. Fuji looks like from far away after the sun has risen. Hopefully that’s descriptive enough, as pictures are worth a thousand words and this one’s sayin’ a lot more than a thousand…..
I have no idea
It wouldn’t be a japanese site without some vaguely (homo)erotic cartoon characters on the premises.
Morning mountain mist
On the opposite side of Mt. Fuji, some morning clouds drape across the sleepy village nestled in the mountains.
The results of a pre-dawn hike
This is where getting up at 4:30 in the morning and hiking for a good hour and a half will get ya. Not a bad deal, seeing as how you get to see the sun rise over Mt. Fuji.
Mt. Fuji
Yes, that behemoth in the background is Mt. Fuji. I’ve never felt so insignificant before as when I rounded the corner and was suddenly stopped by this sight. Of all the things it inspired at that moment, the most intense was a desire to climb it one day. If it could inspire such feeling from so far away, I can only imagine what it must be like to look out on the land that surrounds it from its pinnacle.
Unfortunately, it’s closed for the season so I only get to go up part of it tomorrow. But there’s always next year/time….
Literal translation
The literal translation for this place was “place where you can buy alcohol and stay”. Or, as we like to call them in America, restaurants.
The Best Souvenir
If this could fit in my backpack, I’d take it. In a heartbeat. Screw all the Japanese social customs about theft and honesty. Bringing this puppy home would be worth every shameful moment. If the Japanese invent nothing else in their collective lifetime, that will be okay with me. Instead of describing in intricate detail the miracles this device is capable of, I’ll leave the power of your own imagination to fill in the blanks that the Japanese-only instructions on the armrest explain. (Although it’s best not to push said buttons while toilet is in use, it can make for some hard to explain to your dorm mates surprises)
Bamboo path
One of the shots I found while wandering around a bamboo forest in Kyoto. If you listen to the Air track “Alone in Kyoto” parts of it sound eerily similar to what the bamboo forest sounds like….