A Day in Kiersten's Italy Journal: Pompeii

I've already posted an entry from my youngest brother's Italy journal.  Here is a day from my sister's journal covering our day trip to Pompeii.  The pictures in this post are a mix of those taken by Kiersten and Magge.

The first time I ever read, or even heard about, Pompeii was when I was in second grade off a standard reading test. I just thought it was a made up little story about some small village in Italy.  As I found out more and more, I realized this place is not fictional, it’s real!  Pompeii soon made it on my list of Places I Want to Visit When I’m Older.  When I said “Older”, I was referring to when I was an adult, not a few years later. When I found out that I was actually going to Pompeii when visiting Magge and Jeffrey, I nearly wet myself.  I couldn’t wait to see this famous city.

Petra

I've never had a burning desire to visit the Middle East.  I don't think I can be blamed given the standard treatment the region gets in the mainstream media in the U.S.  However, when we were looking at potential destinations, I was drawn to Petra in Jordan, thanks to Indian Jones and the Last Crusade.  Some research comforted us that Jordan was more than safe for travel, and we slotted one week there between our time in Asia and Europe.  It is one of the best planning decisions we have made.  It can be easy to get jaded after eight months of travel, but no level of road weariness could take away from this ancient city.

Adventuring in Beng Melea

On our last day in the Angkor area, we took a two hour tuk-tuk ride to a temple called Beng Melea.  Although we had already been to a few temples fighting a losing battle with the forest, Beng Melea promised to be the least restored and most adventurous ruin we would visit.  There's a wood walkway that allows tourists to easily walk over the rubble, but our guide from the first day told us there was an "easy way, and an adventure way."  Adventure way sounded good.

As we walked up to the temple, the gate looked just like a mound of stones.  To the right, we saw the wood walkway, and we weren't sure where to start the "adventure way".  "I guess we could just start climbing over that pile," I offered.  One of the locals who was hanging around sensed our desire for danger, and started pointing us towards a way into the main structure.  We would normally shrug the help off, because it usually isn't all that helpful and leads to being asked for money, but we figured it could be worth it this time.  We were right.  The man lead us over collapsed walls, through windows, under bridges and across dark halls into areas of the complex where we didn't see a singe other tourist.  I don't know how far we would have made it on our own without getting stuck, only to be found by archaeologists restoring Beng Melea in twenty years.  By the time we disappointingly linked back up to the main tourist walkway an hour later, I had made up my mind - other Angkor temples may be more impressive for their size and artistry, but Beng Melea is the coolest.

More pictures in the full post.

More Angkor

After two days exploring the main Angkor Archaeological Park, yesterday we went a little further afield to visit two more sites.  The first was Banteay Srei, a small but beautifully restored temple.  The scale compared to giants like Angkor Wat and Preah Khan might be subdued, but the attention to detail is not, and the temple is often referred to as the jewel of Khmer art.

The second site we visited was Kbal Spean, a riverbed that has many Hindu carvings from the 11th to the 13th century.  The carvings are divided into three categories: lingas (phallic representations of the deity Shiva), yonis (female counterpart to the linga, representing Shakti and Devi), and more complex Hindu motifs.  As you can guess from the English translation of the site's name, River of a Thousand Lingas, the phallic carvings are the most prevalent.  The lingas and yonis were believed to have fertilized the water as it made its way to the fields.  We're here at the end of dry season, so the river was nearly dry.  It would have been neat to see the sculptures through running water, but at least we got a clear view of them.

We made a quick stop on our way back to town at the Landmine Museum.  This country continues to be plagued by mines laid during the Vietnam War and the subsequent thirty years of civil war involving the Khmer Rouge.  Cambodia is still one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, with an estimated 5 million or more active landmines, in addition to a myriad of other unexploded ordnance.  The museum was founded by a former Khmer Rouge child soldier that laid down many mines, but has since defused an estimated 50,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance.  It was fairly small, but still worth the time to see what many Cambodians still have to deal with.

More pictures in the full post.

Amazing Angkor

Like Borneo, Cambodia wasn't on our original itinerary.  However, Magge became enamored with the idea of visiting when a couple we met in Ecuador told us that the country had very cheap spa treatments.  We weren't sure we could work it into the schedule until we had to cancel our time in Thailand due to its domestic issues.  So now we're here in Cambodia, a country I knew very little about a year ago.  After two days exploring Angkor,  we can say that it's the most impressive man-made attraction we have seen so far on this trip.

Easter Island: Worth the Wait

When Magge and I realized that we could visit Easter Island (known as Rapa Nui in the native language) on our around-the-world-ticket at no extra cost, we knew we had to make the stop. 2,300 miles from Chile and 2,500 miles from Tahiti, it is one of the most, if not the most, remote inhabited places on earth, and we didn't know when we'd have another opportunity to see it. It was therefore heartbreaking when our flight was canceled after the earthquake and we thought we'd have to skip it. However, we were able to move the flights around, and even though it meant only being there for three days instead of six, we made it to the island. After all the waiting and uncertainty, it did not disappoint.

Incan Ruins

Cuzco is a tourist attraction in its own right, but the primary reason for its popularity is that it is very useful as a base to explore many Incan ruins, especially Machu Picchu, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Magge and I took four days towards the end of our time in Cuzco to explore six different sites.  (Picture to the right is of some storage houses on Pinkuylluna, by the town of Ollantaytambo).

Llanganuco Lodge Day Hikes

Aside from playing with the kids, Magge and I were relatively inactive during our time in Trujillo, so we were looking forward to the opportunity to do some hiking in the mountains.  The Llanganuco Lodge did not let us down, as its location is perfect for a number of day trips.  We were going to hike around the nearby lake the day we arrived at the lodge, but we had barely slept the previous night on the bus from Trujillo, and a much-needed nap derailed our plans.  Over the next four days, though, we were able to get a taste of what the Cordillera Blanca has to offer.  Following Magge's marathon post about the lodge, I will try to keep my writing short and let the pictures speak for themselves.

Trujillo Ruins, Part 2

We followed up last week's visit to Chan Chan with a trip to the Huacas del Sol y de la Luna (Sun and Moon Temples).  The structures predate Chan Chan by approximately 1,000 years, and were built by the Moche people.  The Huaca del Sol has not gone under much excavation, so there is not much to see except for the exterior.  As with Chan Chan, much of it has been destroyed by the elements (only about 25% of the original structure is still intact), but the sheer size of what remains is impressive.  Our guidebook gave us the impression we could walk around, or even on, the temple, but our guide must have not read that book because he seemed confused when I asked for permission to get closer.  We were limited to viewing it from a distance.

The World's Largest Mud City

There is not much to do in Trujillo besides enjoy the great weather (the days' highs fit in that specific temperature range where you would feel comfortable wearing anything, and I'm pretty sure the breeze here is the world's best).  This area receives a small fraction of the number of tourists that southern Peru gets, but those that do come here typically do so for the archaeological sites that are just beyond the city limits.

The largest and most popular of these sites are the ruins of Chan Chan.  This massive city was built with adobe bricks by the Chimor people between roughly 850 AD and 1470 AD, when it was conquered by the Incas.  At 28 square km at its peak (roughly half the size of Manhattan), it was the largest pre-Columbian city in the Americas and the largest adobe city in the world.   I've seen population estimates ranging from 30,000 to 100,000 (of course the local guides and Peruvian literature put the figure at the high end of the range).

As one of Peru's eleven UNESCO World Heritage sites, Magge and I decided before we got to the country that we would definitely pay it a visit.  On Saturday, we signed up for a tour that included a trip to the Huaco Arco Iris (a temple outside the current Chan Chan complex), the Chan Chan museum, the only partially restored area of Chan Chan, Huanchaco (the beach town where we went surfing last weekend) and a guide whose English was nearly as difficult to understand as his Spanish.  Despite the communication issues, the price of $5 per person was worth just getting shuttled between the sites.