If I were to compile a list of all the lessons I have learned about traveling, mentioned in the top five would be “Never judge a final destination by the journey it takes to get there.” One of the first occasions in which this lesson was put to the test was about two months after I had arrived in Peru. A fellow American friend and I were on our way to Ayacucho, hailed by the Lonely Planet travel guide as being like Cuzco except without the masses of tourists. The first four hours of our bus journey were through the desert, a dry and yellow monotony which alone was enough to make anyone feel mind-numbingly bored. After stopping for a quick lunch at a roadside restaurant, we boarded the bus for the second half of the trip, turning directly east towards the mountains.

Sometime around 7 in the evening, a little over ten and a half hours after setting off from Lima, the bus pulled around its final corner and at last we were greeted by the yellow glow of Ayacucho, clinging to the sides of dry, brown peaks. Unfortunately, as can be the case with bus trips, many of the passengers had gotten car sick during the journey, and when the bus screeched and hissed its way into the station, my friend and I grabbed our bags and ran for the door. Fresh air had never felt so good.

But in accordance with my travel rule, Ayacucho does not deserve to be judged by the traumatic bus journey required to arrive there. Ayacucho is a wonderful town and as it was my first real trip outside of Lima, it exposed me to an entirely different side of Peru. In Ayacucho, not only is it safe to walk around at night, but it is possible to get almost everywhere by walking.

There is, however, a stark contrast between the well-kept and beautiful colonial downtown with an acclaimed 33 churches (one for each year of Christ's life) and the widespread poverty of the largely native population, affected deeply by Peru's period of violence between 1980 and 2000. After having spent months reading many horrific stories from women whose husbands and sons were taken by soldiers from the fields and never seen again, it was humbling to be in the place around which much of the conflict was centered.

So there I was, taking a stroll on a sunny, 75 degree day through the streets of a beautiful city where everyone seemed alive, well, and fairly content, and yet not 10 years ago that town would have been one of the most dangerous places to live on earth. I was impressed by the safe and pleasant atmosphere, but still plagued with questions. How does that kind of fear disappear? How does that kind of pain heal? How can anything really ever go back to normal?

Even singing “Baja el Mar” in a Karaoke bar with our new Peruvian friends, I couldn't help but look around and realize that everyone there was old enough to have lived through the violence. Yet when the subject was brought up, an Ayacuchan's greatest complaint was that the memory of the recent past has prevented any sort of thriving tourism in their enchanting city (I refrained from mentioning that the bus ride might also be a deterrent). “Put the past where it belongs and move on” seemed to be the general motto there, and who am I to judge if that's an acceptable way to cope?

And thus the weekend passed, with good times and deep thoughts. As my friend and I boarded the bus to return to Lima, we said a quick prayer that we would be spared the traumas of our previous journey, and lo and behold, the first thing we noticed was that the windows opened. Our good fortune continued when on all sides of us there were seated men in the age range of 20-50 (the statistical group least likely to be relieved of their lunch from the wrong end, as assessed from comprehensive data taken on the bus ride to Ayacucho). The movie was a delightful dubbed version of Home Alone, and except for the screams from one baby that cried for four hours, it was an infinitely more enjoyable ride than the one before had been.

After striking up conversation and asking me a little about what I was doing in Peru, the man sitting in the seat across the isle looked at me intently with a gleam in his eye and said, simply, “How lucky it is that you can get to know other countries.”

That is the understatement of the century.