It's 1579 miles from Philly to San Juan, 1032 from San Juan to Miami, 2621 from Miami to Lima. I arrived in Lima at 4:20 in the morning on Monday, I know this because the flight attendant announced it overhead as I stared blankly and tired out the window to the black tarmac. I looked at my phone, now disconnected and useless for calls, good only to listen to music or play around on unnecessary apps. It says 5:20 still so I change the time. I find my watch in my bag and change the time on that too. We deplane and at the immigration station the officer is outwardly surprised when he asks how long I’ll be staying and I tell him I don’t know, about 3 months maybe. How long is followed by why, why meaning what on earth could I do in Peru for so long. I stutter and say that I will be volunteering on farms in the mountains and sight-seeing also. He stamps a light grey mark into my passport atop the dark grey mountains on the page, my evidence of acceptance into the country barely legible and writes me a visa for 120 days. I am elated by these extra days and think to myself that whoever designed the current US passport pages to have images all over them is a moron.
Before the baggage claim I stop to change currencies from dollars to soles and in several steps more I will find out that I could have gotten a slightly better deal. It is my first defeat of naiveté in Peru and surely not my last. The battered and worn baggage claim belt loops round and round and I see my orange behemoth of a pack, my sleeping bag dangling from it’s side. When boarding the first plane in Puerto Rico I had seen the sleeping bag already loosed from its straps and did not have high hopes it would survive the journey, but here it was, secured only by its drawcord and a carabiner I thankfully attached as added precaution. My first small success, hopefully not to be the last either! It is actually 5:20 then by the time I finish the immigration/baggage process and find a vacant corner of the airport in which to curl up in with my bags. I had slept on the plane but was constantly in and out from the coffee I foolishly drank during my late night Miami layover. After nodding off for a while, I awoke shivering on the floor from chilled Peruvian air and delved into the labyrinth of my pack to find my fleece. I enveloped myself in it and waited for the warmth of my body to trap itself within while thinking about how many layers I was now wearing. It’s mid August and I have on long pants, wool socks, boots, a hoodie, hat, scarf and now a fleece. Something about it all seemed so wrong but felt oh so right. A welcome relief, in truth, after 2 months in the blistering Caribbean sun. Bundled up in my temporary nook I read through my Lonely Planet guidebook and found on one of the maps the hostel where I would first be staying. I nodded off a little more and then looked over some practical spanish phrases, trying to get into the mindset of speaking, listening, thinking in another language, a language of which I do not hold a very strong command. It is necessary and useful but mostly it is an excuse. I am killing time until a more reasonable hour of venturing out into the real world, having to leave my safe, comfortable airport womb. Working up the courage to step out the doors I have been staring at since arriving to take that first polluted breath. The grey-white fog outside seems indifferent as to whether I join it or not and mocks me with its lack of opinion. By now it’s 8:30 and the conditions are beginning to seem prime, but still I hesitate. Check-in at the hostel isn’t until 3 and the idea of being stuck with my giant pack in downtown Lima is terrifying. Mustering up whatever courage I have and running through imaginary spanish conversations in my mind, I decide to go for it; cut the cord.
I grab a taxi outside the airport and my lovely driver Abel chats me up as we drive onward. About a half an hour later we pull up in front of an historic facade with a red, gated entrance; my home for the next few days. Abel overcharges me and helps me take the lightest bag out of his van before giving me his card and going off on his way. I look up at the hostel entrance as locals move hectically all around me. I am here. I am really doing this. Someone from within buzzes me in and I lumber up the stairway to the desk where that same someone is kind enough to let me check-in early. After being shown to my modest accommodations in a room with four bunk beds I slump my bags onto the floor and collapse onto the bed. I hadn’t done anything particularly exerting that morning, it wasn’t even noon and yet I was already exhausted. Deciding I would explore after a nap, I dozed off into a dreamless sleep but awoke to a bitter fear emanating out from within the deepest, darkest depths of my abdominal cavity, consuming me and leaving an acidic taste in my mouth. I lay there unable to make myself get up; this is it. I am here. I am really doing this. I am all alone in the world, in a foreign country, with foreign people whose language I barely speak. I fall asleep again, refusing to confront my fears, only to awake later to the same unsavory taste. I have found a new mother in the hostel, to let go of her hand is unthinkable. Confronting myself in the mirror, I brush my teeth and tell myself that everything is fine. My mouth is minty fresh now, but the fear is still there, unavoidable, inescapable, only conquered by doing exactly that which frightens me most, but it is approaching sunset and I dare not venture too far. I leave the hostel and get a bite to eat from a street vendor: boiled egg and potato for 2 soles or about 75 cents. I sit on a stoop across from the Lima Museum of Art and eat the starchy goodness in an accomplished bliss while Peruvians gawk as they pass. The acrid taste of before is gone. This is it. I am here. I am really doing this!
