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"Stretching"

March 27, 2007

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.
–Oliver Wendall Holmes

The Presidential Palace in Lima

The above quote appeared in a math textbook I used as a freshman in high school. I thought it sounded neat, and since I was actively compiling a collection of personally meaningful quotes, I added Holmes’ statement to my notebook without fully appreciating what it meant. Since carefully copying Holmes’ words into my burgeoning quote collection, I’ve had many mind-stretching experiences. Yet few, if any, have stretched my mind as quickly and immensely as my trip to Peru.

Peru is the first country I’ve visited outside of the United States, which made the trip all the more enlightening. For the first time in my life, I was not proficient in the official language, and it’s amazing just how helpless a language barrier can make you feel. I was very glad of my rudimentary knowledge of Spanish, though I repeatedly wished that I knew more. Also, you never realize how different life can be outside your country until you’ve seen it. This is something you have to see to believe. Nothing I can say can substitute for experiencing it firsthand.

A baby alpaca at a llama farm we visited near Cuzco

I had an amazing time in Peru. We did so much, and it was so cool to see the places we’d studied in class. We spent the first two days in Lima, the capital, and saw many museums and historic buildings as well as a couple archaeological sites. The next four days we spent in Cuzco, which is located in the Andes at about 12,000 feet of elevation. We visited many Inca ruins in the Cuzco area, including Machu Picchu, which was my favorite part of the trip. Downtown Cuzco also has several beautiful churches from the colonial era, which we also toured. After Cuzco, we traveled to Ica, which is near the coast in southern Peru. There, the highlight was a flight over the Nazca lines, relics of a pre-Inca culture. Following our two days in Ica, we took a bus back to Lima, stopping en route for a speedboat tour of the Ballesta Islands, where we saw sea lions, Humbolt penguins, and thousands of other sea birds. We flew back to the U.S. the next day, finally arriving back at Rollins about 1 a.m. Monday. And for the record, I went to my 9 a.m. Monday class.

I highly recommend this kind of structured travel experience for novices at international travel. If I’d tried to set up a trip like this on my own, I wouldn’t have had the foggiest idea where to begin, how to get good hotels and reputable tour guides, what to see and how to get tickets. . . . International travel can be confusing, and I think this kind of trip is the best way to do it if you haven’t done it before. Rollins offers many different study abroad opportunities like this trip to Peru, and I encourage everyone to take at least one during their college career. You won’t regret it.

The ten days I spent in Peru were some of the longest and busiest I’ve ever had. I felt like we were gone a month, and I still don’t entirely believe how much we managed to cram into that short amount of time. My Spring Break was certainly not restful. The most restful Spring Break I’ve had was last year, when I spent a week with my aunt and uncle in Washington State and was able to sleep nine hours every night. However, going to Peru was a sufficient change of pace that I came back refreshed and (almost) ready to tackle the remainder of the semester. And the incredible experience made up for the exhaustion. I would take a Spring Break trip again in a heartbeat.

The Cathedral in Cuzco	Mountain view from the village of Ollantaytambo, near Cuzco	Machu Picchu	A sea lion on the Ballesta Islands

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