Nerves and Peru

This entry is bitty as all hell, reflected my state of mind because it’s next week that I’m off to Peru.

A brand new week and I am incredibly excited. I know it’s only for three weeks (yes, in an ideal world, especially given that I have no job to come back to, we’d be gone for several months) but I have not been travelling in a long time and I enjoy it. I have no idea what it’s going to be like with an actual travelling companion … in a way I’m excited by that quite apart from the fact that we’re heading to Peru.

Excitement is a weird bloody emotion, I’ve been having anxiety dreams of various sorts, I’m nervous as hell and worried and happy about the anticipation. I’m enjoying being keyed up to eleven basically.

So… I’ve never been to Peru, I’ve wanted to go in an active sort of way since I went out to Ecuador about ten years ago. I’ve been idly curious about the place as any child faced with Paddington inevitably is … so whereabouts is darkest Peru anyway? I’m sure we’ll find out! Macchu Picchu itself is also something I’ve wanted to see for the longest while…

As I said before, excitement is strange, I feel very, very happy and excited that these things are going to happen but nervous as well about all the ways things could go wrong. Don’t get me wrong, I know full well that if we’re robbed or get lost I can cope but it will mean we don’t get to do some of the things I really, really want to do. Like see Macchu Picchu, take a train through the Andes, go out on a boat on Lake Titicaca etc.etc. which cost monies…

I’m also nervous about the very way in which I’m travelling … I’m not a natural group traveller. I meet up with people, I make friends, then we travel on, I enjoy travelling alone and just as I make the worst housemate known to man I’m concerned that FJ will find me the worst travelling companion known to man.

In the end I suspect I do know what the nerves come down to. It’s been about four years since I told FJ we should go to South America, three since we actually both said we’d head off to Peru, it’s been ten years since I was last on that continent.
In some ways I am stood in my room on Avondale Road, six years ago about to go to Japan and wondering how on earth I could repay his leaving present, I think I’ve got it but this time there’s no ‘one, two, three and it’s done’ but far, far longer to anticipate, worry and become concerned.

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