Today I came across this interesting travel article on the National Geographic's blog. The article was written by author and traveler Andrew Evans, as he sets out on his journey across South America by bus in hopes of reaching his destination of Antartica. The article that I read was about Evan's two day stay in the urban desert city of Lima, Peru. Here the reader gets to see Lima through the perspective of a exhausted traveler and his initial impressions of Lima. Below I have included an extract from the original article along with a link for those interested in reading more...
" In Spanish, the word "Lima" means "under construction." OK, that's not true. Really, I think it derives from the ancient Inca phrase meaning "perpetual traffic." Alright, that's another lie--but honestly, those were my first two impressions of Lima when I arrived.
Maybe it's because I'd been sitting on buses for 30 consecutive hours and was a little bit cranky. After a 621 miles of desert (that's 1000 kilometers down here), I stared out the window at what I hoped would be my own special urban oasis and jumped to some harsh conclusions. I immediately shot out a tweet that Lima was "the brownest city in the world." Everything I could see was brown--the ground (no grass), the buildings (brown brick)--even the overcast rainy season sky was filled with dust and shone a kind of dull brown-grey.
Let me be clear: I am not on a sightseeing trip. Rather, I'm on a "seeing" trip. I am traveling 10,000 miles on an open itinerary with the ultimate goal of Antarctica--I just try to see what I can see along the way. Admittedly, it's been hard to pass up wonders like Machu Pichu or the greater Amazon, yet the real glory of travel is the unexpected things that pop up all along the way. "
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