Peru: Ante-Trip Scribbles

I'm embarking on my journey to Peru later this morning. Starting with a 6:30AM flight from Oakland. Roughly 26 hours later (non-timezone-adjusted) I'll bee in Cusco, and in the heart of the Incan Sacred Valley, very close to Machu Picchu. I began preparing for this trip by purchasing a ticket in late June, quite an early commitment for my usual tastes, but my friend Jon's wedding was far too compelling. Yes, the wedding is in Peru! But after purchasing the ticket my preparation largely halted, impeded by the usual San Francisco revelry and hot and cold summer weather. Preperations resumed more intensly over this past week and really I should be sleeping now, but I just wanted to get something written down here to kick things off. I must say I'm pretty excited about the trip, but also rather incredulous and therefore a bit nervous; it'll hit me when I get there. See, I haven't been out of the country for over 5 years, so international travel, viz. travel to a country outside of Asia where I do NOT have relatives, is quite a foreign concept to me. But I hope that will all change and that a travel bug (and not a mosquito carrying Dengue fever) will bite me and set me off on a course of international trips that I'll find fulfilling.

I've done little critical reading on Peru, however, I've purchased two small spanish language books to help me revive the Spanish I learned in Mrs. McGuire's class back in high school. I've also been doing a bit of internet reading to augment the Lonely Planet guide I plan to devour during my full day+ of travel and layovers (in Miami/Lima). Notably, I've found that Peru's most recent ex-president, no not the corruption-embroiled nihon-octagenarian Fujimori, but rather Alejandro Toledo, is a Stanford Alum (2 masters, PhD, gave the '03 commencement speech) who loves soccer and was back on "the farm" and living like a normal penninsulite as recently as mid 2007. Also notable is the discovery that a few hostels, roads, and other features of the Peruvian city, Cusco, have the name Amaru. Tupac Amaru, I recently learned from wikipedia, was the last of the line of Incan Kings pitted against the Spanish colonial presence in Peru. There's also a character who shares his name from the 1700's, who lead some type of resistence, but I don't know much about the latter Tupac yet. This brings me to the third and final Tupac, Tupac Amaru Shakur who was apparantly named after the second Tupac I mentioned...

Needless to say I will be collecting as many Tupac Amaru photos & trinkets as possible... but I didn't really intend to digress in such a crass way, it's just an interesting connection. OK, time to get at least 1 hour of sleep! Finally, congratulations to Jon and Guili, whose wedding I'll be attending August 16th in Yucay. And to those of you who read this post and read the one's to come, I hope you enjoy my travel-log... stardate... engage...