Over the last two weeks, I had the pleasure of visiting some of the most amazing and most well-known places of the country where I was born: Peru. Peru holds some of the most amazing ruins from the Inca era, and ever since I graduated from high school I have wanted to go visit these ruins—but what I saw and experienced on this trip was way more than I could have ever imagined.
Usually every time I go to Peru, I visit the capital of Lima where my family and friends live, and although my adventures usually stopped there, this was the first time I saw a completely different part of my country and different types of lives people have outside of the well-known city. Most of the time on my trip, I visited small towns which could be viewed from far away where anyone could tell the culture and way of life was completely different. I learned so much about the places I was visiting from the people that have been there almost their whole lives and realized how much they value and treasure the places they live and how we should all feel that same way about the ground we stand on everyday.
I went to some ruins in a small town called Moray, where Incas used to cultivate different types of plants. In fact, there were a few small houses around the plants and the closest school was miles away. I had to see how the kids walked back to their houses for miles and I imagined how they have to do that almost everyday to get the education they deserve. By traveling, I realized how we don't all have it easy, and how everyone is really struggling with their own battles—some are easier than others.
All countries are different and even different parts of the same county are different than each other, but the only way we can learn about the amazing things that the Earth has in store for us is by going out there and learning about all of it. It's not enough to go to the well-known cities and have a good time by the beach, it's also about learning about the different types of people and their happiness and the struggles that they face day by day. It makes you see the world in many different ways.
In my time here, I also got the chance to visit a small town called Chincheros, a town known for the beautiful clothing make out of Alpaca fur. My family and I visited one place where a few families made their own clothes and they taught us how they made the fur change colors and all the hard work that went into making the beautiful patterns that we see in traditional Peruvian clothing, something that I have never seen done in my 19 years of being Peruvian.
It's never too late to become more educated about the lives other people live every day. Learning about other cultures will only help to broaden your mind and make you want to just keep traveling and learn more about the different types of people in the world. Traveling is something that humans have been doing since the beginning of time, and it is something that we should never stop doing.
