Time To Pack It In: My Last Day In Lima

7.5 months abroad. 7 nations. 37 cities. 6 plane trips. 5 trains. Countless busses. 1 ferry. A dozen canoes. Some pickup truck beds. 2 camels. 2 horses. Uncountable new friends. Family I never knew I had. A few mystery illnesses. All this and I was finally headed home.

     I have to admit, going home after being on the road for 8 months is hard. Leaving Latin America, a place that I grew to love and feel very comfortable with, was very difficult. With that in mind, I wanted to squeeze every moment of life that I could out of the time I had left since you never know when you will be back.
    So I got back in touch with Eduardo's (my former room mate from Lima) good friend Stephanie. I hit her up with a final day of surfing off the Costa Verde on my mind. Luckily, she was all for it, so we met up and the crowd grew as more of her friends and family joined! We roped a few surfboards (they were super nice and let me borrow one and a wetsuit) to the roof of our ride and in no time, we were back in the cold waters off Miraflores.
        We couldn't have asked for a better day. The sun had actually peeked out from the eternal haze that surrounds the city, the waves were just big enough to let me get up a few times without bashing me to pieces, and best of all I had my new friends to chill with! I still was no Kelly Slater, but I managed to catch a few good waves during our session, and only ate it hard once or twice. To be honest, I would have been happy if the waves were flat. I was content lazing on my board in the intense summer sun, bouncing in the swells, just enjoying my last few hours of the backpacker life.
        After a while we got out. That is always a rather delicate process, since the beaches off Lima are all large round rocks (all artificially made) and there are tons of wonderfully spiny urchins waiting in the shallows for an unsuspecting gringo to step on... However, my luck held out and I managed to get up the beach with no more holes than I had before I got in the water. We all dried off and headed to the Club Real country club in the heart of Miraflores (a seriously nice place by any standards) in our board shorts, flip flops and t-shirts.  Over an amazing lunch, Stephanie invited me out to a new theme park in Lima. Apparently it had just opened and it was the first of its kind here. They warned me that it was no 6-Flags, but I was intrigued so I accepted the invite.
        At dusk, we met up and headed back to the sea shore where this thing had been put up. It turns out, this was not really a theme park per se, it was an American traveling fair that had come down to Lima! I was definitely not expecting this, and it was weird to be thrown into the middle of such a piece of Americana when I was least expecting it. American flags still decorated the tents that advertised Philly cheese steaks, the tilt-a-whirl still had images of U.S. pop icons on the carriages, and the roadies, well they were all fresh from the states. It was interesting watching them struggle to communicate to their customers. Most ignored the roadies, and the plain frustration of facing a total communication block showed plainly on their face. I chatted away to my friends in Spanish, but I couldn't help being transported back to my first day abroad, in Medellin. Or later in Paris. Or Marrakech.
      I didn't say anything to them. To be honest, I was in between two worlds. I leaned back in to the conversation amongst my Peruvian friends. I didn't feel like I fully belonged in either camp. Just like the fair itself, one foot on each continent, striking out abroad for opportunity but unable or unwilling to wash away my true roots. It was an odd and very introspective moment for me.
       Soon enough I was washed back into the joy of the evening. Riding rides that, though they had lost their novelty with me as a teen, captured me again as my friends were thrilled for the first time. Go-pro cameras were everywhere. Girls were dressed in heels and dresses. I imagine that this must be how parents felt watching their kid grow up. Not to say that Peruvians are childish, in fact their culture is complex and beautiful, but I mean that merely in the way that I got to witness them experiencing something I had loved for such a  long time. It was refreshing and heartwarming to watch an investment banker with a six figure salary forget about the hard choices, like whether or not to take a full ride to Harvard's MBA program, in the simple joy of a ferris wheel.
        The night ended after some fast food burgers and some heartfelt goodbyes. I headed back to my hostel and packed my bags. In the morning I showered and made sure not to have my Loki "Blood Bomb" t-shirt anywhere near me before I hopped in a cab with another American headed home. A few hours later and I was climbing through the perpetual haze that shrouds Lima, as if to jealously hide her vibrant beauty from the world.
      Till next time I thought.
   
Then I closed my eyes, knowing I would wake up and it would be over.