Out of confort zone

by Júlia Ferreira (Brazil)

A leap into the unknown Peru

In Brazil, the 15th anniversary is a very important date for practically all girls. It is usually celebrated with a great princess style party, or the most dreamed trip of by Brazilians: traveling to Disney parks in Orlando. However, I wanted to do something different. My parents and I had never left Brazil and the first trip abroad had to be special and totally out of our confort zone. In my fourteen year old head, I wanted to feel different from my friends and also know a bit of Latin America so close, but not so often explored by Brazilians. So we decided to go to Peru. My parents weren't very excited about the idea, because it wasn't the kind of trip to relax that they wanted, but they still accepted it. I got excited with the panning, but deep down I had no idea what I was getting myself into. And how wonderful this place could be. As inexperienced travellers, we scripted almost every day of the week we would spend there, with tours to the most famous places: Machu Picchu, Aguas Calientes and cultural tours through the city of Cuzco, but the first day we spent in the capital, Lima, an urban center that hadn't really caught my attention at first. My mother had already hired a city tour that would last half the day and programmed the rest of it to wander around the city aimlessly. But, right at the end of the tour, we met an older couple of people who changed our view of the place. They were from Amazonas, a state in the north of Brazil, far away from our reality in Rio de Janeiro and had already visited more than 10 countries in the world. Soon, we became friends and decided to go for a walk together. We left the tourist center and went to the municipal market, because the old lady said that “to know a real place and the people who live there, we need to go where life happens there, routine of the city”. And she was incredibly right. We saw how a Peruvian butcher works, we bought fruits and grains from the local cuisine, we tasted different juices and foods, we bought gifts at a much more affordable price than tourism and besides all that, we had a real contact with the people who live in the country. Their habits, their native spanish, their public transportation and even their political engagement, because on this day we could witness a protest of teachers in the city. We also visited the Peruvian Chinatown - seeing the fusion of cultures was an unforgettable experience - we went to Gamarra, the neighborhood of the city to buy all kinds of clothes at a very low price. There, we were approached by several salesman who begged us to enter their stores, especially after they heard us speaking Portuguese. They said, with an accent: Brazil, Samba, Football, Caipirinha! - which are the best known stereotypes of my country in the world. It was comical seeing them improvising the Portuguese to try to convince us to buy while we tried to negotiate speaking poor spanish. Finally, we went back to the touristic part and visited the beautiful Lima water park, where we saw a show of sounds and images projected on the fountain waters. Besides everything I described from experiences, the most interesting thing was the friendship we developed in just one day with the couple and how much this added in our lives. We learned interesting tips, got to know other places through their travel photos and mainly, we had a nice company to share memories of a special trip. Not that the rest of the week in Peru wasn't unforgettable, but it's been three years since this happened and even with other wonderful trips later,this day is the most vivid memory I have from a trip ever. The learning I get from this is that experiencing the unknown is always a good request and that the human connections that are created in trips can be very significant for our life. Peru is still my favorite destination of all time, I dream of coming back one day.