Just Park It and Relax
On our fifth official day of travel, back in May 2016, we were sweating under the New Orleans sun in a local park. Tourists captured selfies, peddlers asked us for money, and it already felt like we had exhausted things to talk about. I sat there thinking that we hadn’t planned what we were going to do that afternoon, and we were just wasting our time sitting in the park in the middle of one of the most culturally interesting cities in the US. Was there another museum we should visit? What other foods should we try? Are there other sights to see?
Am I always going to feel like this when we aren’t actively doing something?
At that moment, I was thinking that my Type-A personality just wasn’t going to let that fly. Did we make a mistake? Was this leave-your-job-and-travel thing just not for us?
With "mi amor" in Parque del Amor. Lima, Peru.
Nine months later, we spend a lot of our time sitting in parks and in public, and we love it. People-watching is one of the most interesting ways to experience a culture. We sit at a bench and talk about what we see. We’ve had hour-long conversations about social economics, food production, geomorphology, and impacts of tourism. We often leave a place with a list of “we’ll have to Google it” questions that lead to an evening of learning or great conversation. Our adventure has thrived on curiosity.
Here are a few of our favorite cultural lessons…
A Peruvian child holds a baby goat and watches locals dance in Pisac, Peru
Why do children in Peru have rosy cheeks? People born at high altitudes (Andes, Himalayans, etc) have more red blood cells to assist in processing oxygen in the lower-pressure air. The extra blood causes red cheeks. Some people at higher altitudes can have a full pint more of blood than beach bums at sea level. And then we spent hours learning about how our bodies adjust to different altitudes. We were living at 11,000 feet (3399m) for nearly a month and became “high” on knowledge!
Cucumbers, on pizza?? In Iceland, cucumbers come on everything from hamburgers to pizza. Additionally, “salad” in Iceland should be interpreted as a plate of cucumbers. Iceland’s many geothermal greenhouses allow it to be an agricultural powerhouse of cucumbers, tomatoes, and other fruits/vegetables. Even bananas are produced in Iceland, which has a high summer temperature of only around 55-degrees Fahrenheit.
What is the most spoken language in the world? Near impossible question to answer, largely because of dialects and levels of proficiency of second or third languages, but we were most curious how much of the world has some level of English-language proficiency. Quite frankly, with enough Spanish to get around South America, we have had very few issues navigating language barriers. We’ve learned that many countries teach mandatory English in schools and that roughly 350-400 million people speak it natively and another half-billion as a second language. Our charades game is next level.
Driving across the US, we spent an entire day listening to podcasts about the formation of Earth, the Ice Ages, dinosaurs and mass extinctions. Later on this trip, we dove into human evolution, specifically skin color. We found this fascinating video. It’s worth the watch and all comes down to Folate and Vitamin D. “We are one under the sun.” https://youtu.be/hFw8mMzH5YA
Charles Bridge. Prague, Czech Republic
Why is there black film over everything in Prague? It doesn’t seem like a high-pollution area to be causing so much soot. Air pollution was the obvious answer here but further research yielded some “hooray for belief in climate change!” findings. The soot was caused by coal power plants, in use since the 70s, that are 40km from Prague. Interestingly enough, the EU implemented regulation in 2011 that forced power plants to modernize and reduce their environmental impact and in doing so, the Prague plants were able to cut their emissions by over half. Now, the pressure washers of Prague should get to work...
What is this brown cup with grain at the bottom that everyone is walking around with? Is it a drink or a meal? It’s mote con huesillo, a local drink in Chile made from husked wheat and fermented peach. It isn’t alcoholic but is served cold and provides some relief to the heat. We finally tried it after a very hot hike to Cerro San Cristobal in Santiago, and I knew why everyone loved it!
We’ve learned to embrace the time and digest our surroundings, observing the differences we see in the ways that people live, things they eat, and how they get around. We've also enjoyed learning about our Earth, responsible travel and how to best interact with the landscape that surrounds us. So far, we’ve learned more in parks than we have in any museum we’ve wandered or tour we’ve had.