It was the first time I had ever seen the Pacific Ocean. It was 10 p.m. in Lima, the city just now coming alive, and we drove here and there through the barrios surrounding the airport to the highway that ran by the sea. It pushed. It pulled. It gushed. It called to me. The biggest waves I had ever seen illuminated by the streetlights around fútbol fields dotted along the coast. “This is my first time here,” I told my taxi driver, “and I love the ocean.”
“Bueno,” he said, “Barranco es la playa.”
As an outsider looking in—as a tourist from the EE.UU.—you have choices. Yes, there is crime and poverty. You can choose to see that and avoid it. But you can also choose to see the people. People live and die and work in Lima just like anywhere else in the world. And they play—this is such a playful town. The back alleys behind the Policia National, the street food stands, and the bibliotecas across the plaza hold more life than you could ever find in the local Starbucks that holds a comforting drink you know from home. The city is dying for you to taste it. The real city. The open-air restaurant that sells pollo al horno—the whole chicken. The place that says they don’t speak English where you can find corazón de pollo. The café that has pastries you can’t name. The white-tablecloth establishment that specializes in cuy—guinea pig. What if I lived my whole life in the tourist hubs, never experiencing what makes Peru, Peru? What if I never made new friends in Spanish? How small would my world have been—how boring? How much would I not know? I have people I know who have never left their comfort zone—never tasted the unknown. How does it not drive them crazy? I had waited 6 months to come to Peru, and I was finally here. All the fear and unknown surrounded me. But what was my fear? Was it based in reality? A carjacking ready to happen? Or was it based in prejudice or cultural ignorance? Was I just ashamed that my broken Spanish sometimes went misunderstood by my taxi driver? How often do we stay in our bubbles for fear of something that isn’t even scary at all on account of our own biases? Those questions plagued me as we zipped through Miraflores on our way to my hostel. Because I was here, breathing the Pacific air for the first time. I had made it to the place of my dreams and I couldn’t believe it.
I did much reflection by the ocean in the mornings. Fog hugged the cliffs and unbothered surfers danced on the waves below. I thought about my own nakedness faced with the absurd, as Camus put it—my own shortcomings—my own triumphs—racing thoughts raged on with the crashing of the waves—raw humanity I couldn’t avoid. What would come of the next 3 years of my life? Where would I end up? Was my life coming at me or was I coming at my life? I closed my journal and walked the barrio—a healing thing. I think that the existentialist in me could only be made whole by walking.
“Estás soloita?” my taxi driver asked. A new way of saying alone. It was sweet, the little “-ita” tacked onto the ends of the Spanish words meant to show affection. He asked where I was from. “Tejas,” I said.
“Ah! Tejas,” he smiled. Everyone loved Texas.
At 5:30 a.m., the San Pedro train station looked as if it hadn’t operated in years. I was put at ease only by the soft sounds of whispering Germans who likely doubted the train’s existence as I did. But sure enough, it came. I boarded hungry and shivering, to meet an Aussie named Theo who struck up a conversation. Four hours and a bag of snacks and chocolate later, we covered linguistics, being LGBTQ+, and travel. He too loved Texas—a funny thing. For as much as I loved Europe, Europeans and Australians adored Texas. Fetishized it. He had never been, so I got to tell him about Buc-cee’s and Tex-Mex. He didn’t understand—some things you have to see to believe.
I once again mixed alcohol and questionable meat. Aguas Calientes, the gateway to Machu Picchu, is a delightful little tourist town with train tracks running through the center on which kids in traditional Peruvian dress chase dogs uglier than Gollum’s asshole, as my sister put it. It was here I found the white-tableclothed restaurant serving the beloved Peruvian delicacy and my bucket list item—cuy. It was reminiscent of Ouray, Colorado, the restaurant and town nestled into a valley in between peaks of the Andes. I sat on the terrace. My waitress produced my “medio cuy”, head, buttocks, ribcage, and all. It was good. Everything I had hoped. I did not eat the head, put off a little by the presence of my little friend’s still-sizable incisors.
There were so many people met. The Polish family who poked fun at me for wanting to go to Szczecin. How was I to know? It looks like a beautiful town. “Go to Gdańsk,” she said. “Much better. Good food.” The second Aussie named Theo. “I know how to find the good stuff,” he reassured the other Aussie friend. “The coke here is crazy.” We played Uno into the wee hours of the night and introduced each other to Texan and Australian music. They had Ocean Alley, I had George Strait. I reminisce still on the sound of the upstairs karaoke battle eclipsing our conversation on family, sips of Peruvian beer, and slams of the +2 card in Uno. “Draw 16, cunt,” he said to Theo. We all laughed. Some things are universal.
Qué es hogar? I left a piece of myself in Lima. With my Brit friend. There’s a moment in my mind forever—we are pulling into each other, swaying back and forth, laughing about everything, a drunken state of bliss. He tells me I look beautiful in my glasses; a compliment I’ve gotten before. I wear them the next day just for him, never to say goodbye. He crosses the street in front of the restaurant I am eating at—chicken fried rice, Peruvian style—and I watch him go. I know we’ll always have Barranco. I leave that evening. I am dosing off at the airport in Colombia wondering if moments like those will ever stay. Is home bound to fade into the skyline, several thousand meters below? Should I jump out and grab it by the hair? Or do I return to Dallas, wake up at 5 a.m., and let it exist in my mind? Forever locked and unlocked in times of workplace stress? Bob Dylan sings about a simple twist of fate. What about a simple twist of what once was? Turning the knife, turning in to look back. Home is where I left it, two thousand miles away, calling to me.