Recovering from a Dream Come True

Ever since I was a freshman Spanish student (about 1966) looking at a strange and wonderful photograph of Machu Picchu, the ancient Inca city, I have wanted to visit Peru. I enjoy travel, and am lucky to have married a man who also loves to roam the world. We talked about taking a trip for years, but something always stood in our way - money, time, political unrest. So last fall when our University of Wisconsin, Whitewater alumni magazine came out with an ad announcing a trip to Peru, we decided this was our time to visit South America.

The university used a company called Pilgrim Tours to organize the trip, and we had a university representative to come along with us, so really all we needed to do was find the funds, read up on Peru, and decide what to pack. We always have up-to-date passports, so that was no problem.

The trip, overall, was wonderful, everything I hoped it would be. But the getting there and coming back was a challenge. The first day was a week ago Sunday, and we were in Whitewater at 6:30 in the morning to load a charter bus to Chicago O'Hare. We left our cars at the university. The plan was to leave Chicago just before noon, fly to Houston, then an hour later catch another flight for the 3, 100 miles to Lima. We were supposed to have a Sunday city tour and a welcome dinner and folklore show.

Three traits every traveler needs are flexibility, patience, and stamina. We have the first two, but I learned that my stamina is not what it used to be. Air travel can be exhausting. Our first flight was delayed two hours, which caused us to miss our flight from Houston to Lima. The airline put our group up in a hotel for the night, and we took a morning flight on Monday. Actually, some of our group went directly to Lima, but several of us were diverted to Panama for six hours first.

Going to Panama turned out to be interesting. We could have waited in the airport, but as a group we decided to try to get to see the Panama Canal. We had to purchase a visa, go through security, explain that we did not have a hotel, and then find a way to get to the Miraflores lock. While the group rented a locker for our carry-on luggage, my husband negotiated with a couple of taxi drivers. He finally found a van to take us to the canal and back in time for our flight to Lima - $25 a person round trip.

One man in the group had passable Spanish, so he communicated with Denise, our amiable driver, who spoke a tiny bit of English. She drove us the 45 minute trip through Panama City, pointing out places where both the rich and poor live, schools, churches, the cemetery for the men who built the canal.

I gather that the Panama Canal has three sets of lock. The closest one to the airport is the Miraflores lock. There is a nice visitor's center with a museum and an explanatory video, but we had just 35 minutes to watch ships go through the lock, and to get back to the airport.

To me, a lock is a lock, But to my dear husband, a lock is an endless source of wonder and entertainment. Still, it was interesting to find myself in a new country looking at one of the world's marvels of engineering. Here he is, in his element. We saw two ships passing through the Miraflores lock, then we paused for a group photo (taken by a couple from Venezuela celebrating their 50th anniversary), and finally we made our way back through rush hour traffic to the Panama City-Bay County International Airport.

We made it to Lima and our hotel by midnight, and we set our wake-up call for 4:30 in the morning, because we had a morning flight to catch over the Andes to Cusco.

To be continued.

Re-imagining Local Landmarks

Here's a vintage linen postcard of Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin.  The back says, Williams Bay on the west shore of Lake Geneva is a recreational center with an excellent beach.  Nearby is the famous Yerkes Observatory, home of a large refracting telescope.  The Observatory is open to the public Saturday afternoons.  The observatory, created in 1897, was the largest refracting telescope used for scientific research.  It was owned by the University of Chicago, but I believe it has been sold, and I am not sure if the public can tour it anymore.  THe large dome is visible for miles around.

I had an idea to use vintage postcards of places that mean something to me to design simple collages.  I've seen this done as quilt patterns, and thought that I could simplify the shapes enough to do a postcard size miniature collage.  This was my plan.

Here is the collage so far,  not so interesting as I hoped, but a start.  It is the same size as the original postcard, three and a half by five and a half inches.  The hardest part of the project was the small size.  It's time consuming and tricky to cut such tiny pieces and glue them down accurately.  A friend recently gave me a large bag of magazines to replenish my stock of colors and textures, so finding paper was not difficult, but the detail on the telescopes was harder than I thought it would be.  I had an idea to do several Wisconsin collages like this of landscapes or landmarks, but I'm not sure how interesting the result so far is.  Maybe it's too soon to tell.  If any of you have reactions, I'd be interested in hearing them.

I'll be away for a week, and look forward to seeing the landscapes and landmarks of Peru.  I'm taking my sketchbook and camera, so I hope to share some of our adventure here.

Spring - old images and a poem

old illustration from 1880s children's book

Grandma's childhood friends, fishing in southeast Washington, c. 1911

The vernal equinox is today, and people on other blogs talk about their green grass and daffodils.  It'll be a while before that kind of spring comes to southern Wisconsin.  There are signs.  We picked watercress the other day, and I have a little vase full of pussy willows.  The cat has stopped keeping me company in bed, and I finally removed one of the blankets.  Some other signs are not tied to the weather, like the high school basketball tournaments, and the orange road construction cones coming out of hibernation.  I have faith; spring will come when it's good and ready.

Ice Age

by Pam Lewis, in the 2009 Wisconsin Poets Calendar

Sixteen thousand years ago

a cold clockwork brought the ice

to this ridge and the land beyond,

the earth still combed and pitted,

giant bones of mammoths buried

in our own marrow.

Now the prairie grasses sprout

in choruses of cowlicks at our feet,

while pleated black roofs

stretch in hosts of triangles to the horizon;

and a shiver runs up the spine

as an unseen landscape advances like a glacier.