I Hate Reverse Culture Shock!
You’re suppose to get culture shock when you visit cultures unlike your own. Well, my experience over the past nine months has been just the opposite. I get fairly crushed when I go to the areas where the culture is similar to home including home itself. I arrived in Buenos Aires this morning and it is hard to adjust. I miss Peru already. The city seems like America or Europe and it has all the bustle and marketing that they have. I will say no more because I expect that the crush will fade and I will make the adjustment and find something to love about it. The women certainly are beautiful 🙂
I had another crazy bus ride in Peru yesterday from Nasca to Lima. I was once again in the front row of the second floor with just a giant windshield between me and impending death a number of times. The driver was such a maniac that we did the drive in 6.5 hours versus the 8 it took to go from Lima to Nasca. It was like watching a scary movie with your hands over your eyes and your fingers are spread. I could have gotten up and gone to the back, but I had to watch the insanity. And this is a good Peruvian bus company!!! I won’t bore you with all of the close-calls. Suffice to say that you would never think in a million years to try the stunts and at the speeds with your car that this joker did with a bus full of people and many of the tires bald. On top of his maneuvers, most of the other drivers were pulling their equally stupid tricks. Let me tell you, it is one hell of an experience to be living it when there is evidence every kilometers and often every few meters of past road deaths. Picture being on the scariest rollercoaster you can imagine and there are markers on the side listing the previous riders who didn’t make it. Enough said…
I want to say that I can’t wait to get back to Peru because it is true, but I am also looking forward to decompressing and heading south to Patagonia and seeing the Argentinian countryside. I know there are some great adventures ahead. I am armed with Bruce Chatwin’s classic In Patagonia to guide me through the last place on the planet. I will write two more stories about my adventures with Mark in Arequipa and Colca Canyon as well as Sacred Valley in Peru before the next great adventure begins.
In the meantime, I bought a ticket for a western concert in Buenos Aires today and I will buy another tomorrow. I wouldn’t buy either one in the States, but the price is right here and I can use the diversions. The first is to see a pathetic “SUPER” band of the eighties called Asia. The draw for me is Steve Howe (Yes) on guitar, Carl Palmer (Emerson, Lake and Palmer) on drums and John Wetton (King Crimson) on bass. The downside is that great musicians often do not make great music together. I will go for the individual efforts. Given that I only have to walk across the street to the smallish theatre to watch, my effort will be minimal. The second concert will be Roger Waters who used to lead my favorite band of 20+ years ago – Pink Floyd. In this case, I will go to hear some of my favorite songs albeit ones I rarely listen to today and ignore the fact that the real Pink Floyd is not present. This could be a tough one, but I can always leave early. I’ll report on my dip into first-world extravagant, crappy, over-hyped music events next week or so.
I promised pictures of Cusco women. I did the hard part of trimming them down to reasonably sized files thanks to an upgrade in my Olympus desktop software that supports batch processing. But my wifi connection at this Buenos Aires hostel sucks and the uploads to Yahoo also via batch mode thanks to their newest software are failing. I will keep trying. I am partially happy that two companies have provided me with the needed tools to support photos for your pleasure for the rest of my trip and I look forward to getting them to you in a more timely manner. There are 148 Cusco photos ready to go which should make your eyes blurry, but I will work on a more digestable amount for the Nasca Lines in the next few days before I leave “civilization” again. If you think 148 photos of Cusqueans is a lot, I bet I have more than that of iguanas and sea lions in Galapagos. At least you get the opportunity to abort Rick’s photo over-indulgence as I will have with Roger Water’s concert.
Next week I plan to go to Patagonia… the end of the planet. This is another dream coming true. I’ll save the Chilean side and the real end of the continent, Tierra del Fuego, for another trip, but I will be trekking on a glacier soon. I’m equipped with Bruce Chatwin’s classic In Patagonia to guide me. Desert, mountains, glaciers, jungle… Argentina like South America in whole has it all…
Tags: argentina, peru, south america, Travel
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