We Can Flush Toilet Paper Now
Seattle, USA

Wow. It's going to take a bit of time for us to adjust to being home. It's a bit trippy being here right now.

We have been home a whole day now, after taking about 35 hours to fly from Ayacucho to Seattle via Lima, Sao Paulo, and L.A. This also marks the first full day that I haven't touched my camera in the past year. Weird.

Incidentally, just yesterday in Ayacucho, riots broke out as protesting teachers clashed with police; several dozen people were injured and a few buildings were burned. Our friend Donna tells us that things are pretty bad there right now; we hope that things settle down soon.

After using the toilet earlier today, I inadvertantly deposited the toilet paper in the garbage can next to the toilet, as we have been doing in most toilets (when there was one) during the past year. Ack! Who would have thought that our bathroom habits would have been modified?

And boy, are things expensive back at home. $5.00 for a bowl of noodles! Heh, I know, that's pretty cheap, but we've been paying a fraction of that for most meals the past year. And gasoline prices... we read all about the increases while we were gone, but... they are ridiculous!

It took about two hours to go through the mountain of mail that we accumulated. Most of it was bills and junk, but it was pretty fun to have Christmas in July. Thanks to those of you who sent us Christmas cards and wedding invitations, even though you knew we were out of town!

It's odd now, being in our house where we suddenly seem to have so much stuff, most of it probably unnecessary. Sadly though, we are being hit pretty quickly by reality; Jen went into work today to deal with some administrative details, and I just put in an order for our cell phones, in preparation for getting back to work. Sigh. It was nice being unconnected for a year.

We have posted the last couple of pictures on the Peru Two page, and so the only things remaining to do on this website are a few final columns and the final home page. We have had several requests for a "Travel Tips" page, which we will do and post within the next few days.

Many people we know here are wrapped up in 4th of July (American Independance Day) plans for the long weekend. We won't be doing much celebrating ourselves as we've got a house to unpack and two backbacks to empty. It's a bizarre feeling, but it does feel good to be home after all!

---

Last Blog from the Road
Lima, Peru

Well, as they say, all good things come to an end.

This particular thing transcends the word "good", we think.

The numbers? Well the numbers say 365 days, 27 countries, 50 flights, 5 continents, and 2 backpacks.

But the essence of our One Year, One World experience isnŽt in the numbers. It's not even really in the pictures (although we really appreciate everyone's positive comments), or the blogs.

We think the essence of our journey is in the people... the friends we have made, the people we have met, the individuals who have touched us with their lives. Our lives are now further enriched by the contact we have had with so many different (and similar) people from so many varied and colourful backgrounds. From tourmates to guides, local vendors to hospitality staff, massive crowds to solitary individuals, old friends living overseas to random new friends and travellers... we have learned much from them all and have grown as a result of these encounters.

This is obviously a somewhat emotional time for us, as we sit here in the airport waiting for our final flights home. We have been doing a lot of reflecting and remniscing during the last few days, and still feel somewhat caught up in a maelstrom of mixed emotions.

We're excited and have a great deal of anticipation for our return home, where we're eager to be reunited with family and friends. At the same time, we're somewhat apprehensive and anxious about our adjustment to "normal" life; we're definitely reluctant about having to deal with the daily details of starting up regular life again. We're not really coming back from a vacation after all, this is more like a whole change in lifestyle.

We're sad to be leaving the road, and a bit disappointed that we werenŽt able to see some of the destinations that we were hoping to visit. But weŽre also a bit tired and wouldn't mind a change of clothes, a familiar bed, and maybe a warm bowl of soup noodles.

The greatest emotion of all right now though, is perhaps that of gratitude; we know we have lived a dream in the last year, and are incredibly grateful for having had the opportunity to travel. This year has been fulfilling and enlightening in so many ways; we have both grown as individuals and as a couple because of it.

Well, on that note, IŽll publish this last blog from the road! WeŽll have perhaps a few more blogs and webpage updates once we get things sorted out at home, but after that, that'll pretty much be it!

---

Final Days in Peru
Lima, Peru

Sunday morning, we were picked up by our guide Leo and driver Arnand in a minivan in Arequipa. Driving out of the city, we stopped by for a view of the three volcanoes that frame the city, including Misti, which is till active. The scenary leaving Arequipa is very dry, deserty and not too pretty. Once you are outside the beautiful colonial area, the homes are little one storeyed shacks with tins roofs.

We drove for a while along a new road, then entered a national reserve. Here we saw families of vicunas in the wild. Not sure if you remember, vicunas is part of the camelid family (along with alpaca, llama and guanaco), and has the softest wool (a scarf will cost you upwards of $100 USD). Each family of vicunas in the wild include one adult male, and up to 6 females with their young. Once a juvenile male becomes an adult, he is forced to leave the colony and find his own.

Further along, as we start getting higher up the mountains, we see many llamas and alpacas grazing. The people up here are all breeders; there is a ton of land, with the type of vegetation that is appropriate for these animals. We reached a pass at 4,900m (the highest point we reached on this whole trip) and stopped to view the landscape that surrounded us. At the top of this pass, we can see 8 different volcanoes that belong to the Andes, including Ampato, where they found the ice maiden in 1995 (see Arequipa blog).

As we started to descend, we saw a couple of vizcacha, these funny animals that are half squirrel, half rabbit. The two we saw were just sleeping on the side of the dirt road; one was upright with its paws on a rock, while the other was laying horizontally like a cat. They looked so funny being oblivious to our stopping just feets away while they snoozed in the sunlight. The temperature outside was -15C, so it was quite cold. They have rabbit eats and the size, but with a squirrel tail and snout. Quite funny.

As we drove down towards the Colca Valley, we started to see more traces of ice, snow and waterfalls. There are also many more llamas, alpacas, sheep and cattle. We eventually drove down to the town of Chivay, at 3900m about sea level where we stopped for lunch and checked into our hotel. I ended up sleeping the rest of the afternoon while Winston went to the nearby hotsprings.

Chivay itself is very small. What's interesting is the women's costumes. They are ultra colourful, covered with embroidery, from their cloaks down to their skirts. I think Winston will post some photos soon. That night, we enjoyed local music and dancing while having dinner.

The next morning, we left town at 6am and headed along the canyon. We stopped in at a couple of small villages along the way, and looked at their churches. Each village has a colonial church, constructed soon after the Spanish arrived in the late 1500s. The people that lived in this valley were excellent agriculturalists, and built thousands of terraces on both sides of the canyon valley, as well as irrigation canals from the top of the surrounding mountains. These were built during pre-inca era, and history states that when the Incas came, they left everything alone and relied on the expertise of the local people.

We arrived at the condor view point and spent an hour watching these magnificent birds glide in the area. I lost count of the number of birds that we saw, since they kept returning to their nests and coming out again. It was interesting to see the variations of colours from the young to the old. The younger ones (both male and female have similar colourings) are black and white, and look very impressive when their wings are fully expanded. The older ones, are fully brown. We saw one guy repeatedly. It was easy to notice because it was missing a feather or two on one of its wings. It came really close to the crowd that had gathered to watch; in one occasion, it was just maybe 5 feet above our heads. It was a very cool experience.

Then it was a long ride back to Arequipa. Leaving the canyon just before 9am, we arrived at the Arequipa airport at 2:15pm. Along the way, we stopped back in Chivay for a boxed lunch, and then another rest stop. At the rest stop we had a good laugh over a bleating sheep that circled the building looking for 'someone', we think. We eventually did see another sheep with a lamb, but that original sheep was still baaing somewhere behing the building. For some reason, both sheep were interested in walking into the restrooms and restaurant, only to be chased away, of course.

From Arequipa to Lima, we flew with Aero Continente, which was full of tourists returning from Cuzco. I think I slept part of the way, I can't remember now but we were pretty tired from two days of driving through the canyon. Back in Lima, we spent time catching up on emails at the airport before heading to the Cruz del Sur bus terminal in the old city for our 9pm departure to Ayacucho.

The reason why we flew to Lima from Arequipa was to avoid a long 14hr bus ride to Ica, then wait for several hours, before transferring on another long 7 hour ride to Ayacucho. So, we thought we would be smart and fly halfway there. We were actually hoping to fly from Lima to Ayacucho as well, but we were not able to secure a seat from Arequipa as the airlines did not have offices there (In Peru, only the airline offices themselves can issue the tickets, and since two out of the three airlines to Ayacucho do not fly to Arequipa, and the third one did not fly on Tuesdays, we were out of luck). We thought it was a good idea at the time to take the over night bus (on what we thought was a more comfortable service of bus).

As it turns out, the bus was not as comfortable as the ones we had taken with Ormeno. I had the back of the seat in front of me on my knees all night, but did manage to get some sleep. Luckily Winston had taken a dramamine (motion sickness pill that makes you drowsy) so he managed to sleep through the ride. Sometime after 6am, we woke up to find the bus stopped with no driver. It turns out that the bus had broken down, and took the drivers about 3 hours to 'fix' the problem. I don't really know what the problem was, but we did drive that second half with engine smoke coming out the side. We sure were glad when we finally arrived in Ayacucho.

We met up with Winston's friend Eldonna and her fiance soon after. It was great to see Donna again, and to meet her David, a super nice Peruvian man who speaks no English. Who knew that by the end of the day, we could understand his Spanish, and he could understand our mixture of broken Spanish and some English. Ayacucho was an interesting place to see; it certainly was not the 'charming' colonial city as described in Lonely Planet. The area has been hit hard by terrorists (Shining Path guerilla group) in the early 90s and the city has been left in shambles since. There were a lot of fighting back then between the government and the terrorists, and the wealthy left for Lima, while those from the mountain villages came to town when their villages were destroyed.

The city is considered one of the three poorest in all of Peru. It also doesn't help that there is currently a huge teacher strike all over the country. Apparently the government has told schools that parents are now expected to pay for the education of their kids in public schools, so there has been an outcry from the community as well as those in the profession. In a town where poverty is already a problem, how can they add on the extra burden of paying for their children's education?

Anyway, problems aside, we visited David's extended family and met a ton of his aunts, uncles and cousins. We were greeted with a very warm reception, and served a delicious lunch with the family. It was great to spend time with a real Peruvian family, and converse (with Donna acting as the interpreter). After lunch, we hung out on the rooftop with the dogs and cats, and ate some local fruits. Ah, what a great way to end our stay in Peru.

In the late afternoon, David went to play football with his cousins while Donna took us on a walk around town. We met up again in the evening, and enjoyed a lovely pizza dinner. It was so much fun talking about different issues and we now know that we will have to come back again someday to go visit the countryside with them.

We flew back to Lima this morning on a tiny but comfortable prop plane. The 50min flight definitely beats the 13.5hr bus ride the night before. Our next flight is at 1:55pm to Sao Paolo, then on to LA and finally Seattle tomorrow, July 1st. The next time you hear from us, we'll be back home!

---