Trip to Peru

Trip to Peru was a journey of self understanding for me. It gave me a chance to know myself and deeply understand what I thought I have understood in life. It opened my eyes to where I am in this world and showed me my strength and how easy is to change my life and life of others in this world.

Pishi and I enjoyed a fantastic relationship with people of Peru and our guides. The first guide showed us the Capital of Lima. Lima is a very humid city with smell of the ocean. That is the Pacific Ocean. We spent 1 day in Lima and then flew to Cusco. Cusco  3,400 m above the sea level. Cusco is a beautiful city with strange weather. The city is surrounded with mountains and because of it's high elevation it doesn't snow often. Pishi and I had elevation sickness the first day we arrived which was resolved with the altitude pills and lots of cocco tea!
We spent 2 days in Cusco and visited different site and smaller villages close by.
Afterwards we started trekking in Lares Trek. Andes mountains reminded me of mountains in Europe and Iran. Although they were much higher in altitude. During trekking with the help of pishi and our guide and assistant guide I was able to more or less overcome my fear of hights. We met local people and witnessed an authentic rural Andean way of life. We bought pens and notebooks for the village children as per our guide's suggestion. Giving out these stationaries during our hike and seeing their faces brighten up with their shy smiles was the most rewarding experience I had in my life.
I try to help people as I come in contact with them, but help building a future for children is different. In the past few months, I have been more observant to the new generation and their likes, hopes and dreams, I think I have finally grown up as I don't think only of myself and now see myself as a tool to help the new generation. It is funny, I thought I would feel this way when I am much older but one thing that stuck to my mind from my Quality Management instructor was the theory of abundance in that there is no limitation  to the opportunities. I remember I had difficulty understanding this concept when I was in high school but I know see everything is linked in how I view this world. If you limit yourself to only a few options, you feel frustrated and threatened.
The hike and the sound of the river and the wind between the mountains was peaceful. It made me think about what I have learnt in my life and allowed me to reconnect with mother nature and see how people live with such limitation with happiness. People who don't have electricity and only 1 room to live in, lived life to the fullest. You could see their smiles were sincere. Their beautiful hand crafts which took them months to complete using old traditional methods using nature's amazing colors was made with such love.
We learned from Inka families how they transform the Alpaca's fur to thread and use amazing natural colors to make beautiful hand crafts.
Our perseverance's paid off and we reached the highest pass of the trek! We performed a traditional prayer respecting the 4 mountains in different directions of the pass and head to Macchu Picchu.

Macchu Picchu, the city that Inka's tried hard to protect from Spaniards in which they fought them for 40 years in another region of the area to distract them from finding this interesting city was magnificent. The use of science and technology in Inkan era was unbelievable. I learnt that even though we tend to think that we are smarter than our ancestors, this is absolutely not true. The engineering in Inka Traces and their pilot agricultural areas are amazing. The strange part is while the rest of the civilization was growing with a different paste this culture was re-inventing themselves similarly but a few hundred years later.

After visiting Macchu Picchu we head to the Amazon rain forest. I always wanted to see the Amazon jungles since childhood when we studied them at school. My childhood friend Sina and I when our families would go to North of Iran used to pretend that we are in the Amazon when sneaking in the areas covered with tall tress with big leaves. Amazingly after visiting the Amazon rain forest and walking in the jungle, I can say that aside from the giant trees, the shape and type of vegetation is similar to North of Iran at least the area that we visited. Riding on the river which had many different spices of fishes. Participating in bird and caiman watches were the high lights of the Amazon portion of our trip. Amazing birds consisting of different types of parrots with magnificent colors created out of this world experience. Although I must say there were may different bugs around as well which having net suits really helped!
We saw beautiful butterflies and I saw a green snake just pass by me!! This portion of my trip brought peace in me with the snakes and the caimans!

I wrote this to remind myself and pishi of the wonderful time we had in Peru, eventhough I didn't detail out the salt mine and the rest of amazing places we visited there, we can look back at our adventures together before we become boring with kids :-)

One more trip is on the go and that is coming up in 3 weeks!Italy and France here we come!!