Sometimes it feels like my life is in transit. I wonder in those moments if life is a sum of the places you are waiting to go, or if the key to life is enjoying the journey and the mundane, endless hours in the terminals of… wherever.
And as it turns out… It is. If you don’t enjoy the process of getting there, you will miss out on those perfect sunsets, the people you met along the way, and when you get to your destination, you will only be thinking about how much you hated getting there.
All of these thoughts are summed up in my latest trip down south to do a borrower verification with our field partner, Manuela Ramos. It started out last weekend when I took a trip to Arequipa to see American movies (yes they have a theater), to see Mt. Misti rising up from the town, and to read in the shade of every park I could find. From there, I took another bus to Puno passing the high mountains and flamingos and deserts and lakes.
In the first two days in Puno, I had traveled all over Juliaca and beyond, and down to the Bolivian border near Yunguyo. Which added up to waking up before sunrise, and getting back hours after the sunset over Lake Titicaca. Unfortunately, one very elusive borrower had taken off to Moquegua (another part of Peru). And if I couldn’t find her, I had to visit another 10 new borrowers. With parents arriving on Monday, I choose (reluctantly and not enjoying the journey) the 7 hour trip for a 15 minute interview.
I was back in the morning, and headed out to the spectacular islands on Lake Titicaca. First to the famous floating islands Los Uros which I visited three years before, and then to spend a night on Amantani and a morning on Taquile. I ended my stay with a cannonball in the freezing cold lake (did I mention that the lake is 3810m high??).
70 plus hours on buses, trucks, vans, boats. Exhausted. But happy. Remembering that traveling, meeting people, the journey, is why I did this in the first place.
Eric Burdullis 