Back to Lima

I didn´t think it´d happen but we´re actually excited to be back in
Lima! I´m digging the sea level, the fog, the warmth - and the food!
Our hostel is super clean and new, too - so that helps. We´ve got
just a few more days before we´re back in Chicago and although I´m sad
to stop our South American adventures, I´m pretty pumped to get home
and see everyone...and eat Chipoodles.

We´ll be in Chicago for a month and then we´re off to Europe for a
month so more blo----friendly updates and pictures in July.

For now we´re taking Lima at a sloooooow pace - catching up on
reading, relaxing and doing as little as possible each day. I´m just
getting over a cold and it´s a nice excuse to be ridiculously lazy.
We just posted our pics of Colca Canyon and Arequipa - including our
double decker bus tour of the city.

Colca Canyon was supposed to be a bit more amazing - but it turns out
it´s just a sickeningly early journey to see some big birds from kinda
far away with a billion other people. A bit too pricey for what it
is. However, on the way we got to hold and pet some big eagles and
MAN OH MAN was that awesome. Just beautiful. Also Jeff got to pet
what may be the cutest baby Alpaca on the planet.

We didn´t exactly want to take a night bus back here to Lima but ended
up being forced into it since that´s all the options any bus lines
had. And just when we met some bruised and limping gals who got in a
night bus crash. Fantastic - really instilled confidence in me the
whole time. We made it in one piece, though and Lima´s been good to
us so far. Off to a book exchange and maybe we´ll catch a movie
(preferably in English) - it´s Tuesday! The cheapest day at the
movies! (that´s right - the prices vary depending on the day -
strange, eh?)

See you Chicago people on Friday!

Llama Drama

So we go spit on by a llama. And I had just asked a girl the other
day who works with textiles and has seen a ton of llamas and alpacas
and I asked - aren´t they like camels and they spit a lot? No, no,
she says, not unless you´re cutting off their fur or really pissing
them off - they are generally very calm.

Well just our luck, on our city tour of Arequipa yesterday we came
across a mini zoo of llamas and alpacas at an ¨outlet¨ of wool
sweaters and clothes (don´t get excited like I did, it wasn´t the
discount outlet store I was hoping for but it was a nice store).
Anyway, our tour group had a few younger brits in it who thought
banging on the fence of a nice, serene looking llama thing with big
doe eyes would make him pose better for pics. He was SO serene when I
was taking pics, then I turn around to look at other things, jeff
walks by and it all happens at once! I hear a hissing and a spitting
noise and I have chewed up grass on me (thank goodness for
sunglasses). I start cowering and Jeff starts laughing - him being
the tallest one with sunglasses and a hat I guess made him the next
target because he got spit on like 3 times and if I wasn´t so shocked
at what was happening I would have gotten better action shots - but I
just stood there. Hysterical - and kinda gross.

The tour was pretty neat since we got to sit on the top of a double decker. We saw some beautiful landscapes, some guinea pigs (poor things were probably dinner, but they make cute noises when alive), a tour I refused to climb up because just the stairs to get to it were tiring (I really may be dying I´m acting so old these days), some mangy dogs on roofs (hahahha), AND we got to stay on the tour for 2 extra hours because they messed up our tickets. We tried to get off the bus and they said get back on and so we did and THEN they figured our their mistake. Too late - more tour for us. Ha! Except it was freezing at night on the top of the double decker. Oh well - it´s like 2 for 1!

Let´s see - so that´s us in Arequipa. Tomorrow we´re going to see the
condors in Colca Canyon - those would be the largest birds in the
world! Fantastic! Too bad our camera sucks, but it´ll do. There´s a
two day option where they take you down to the bottom of the canyon to
sleep with no electricity or heat, and then they make you walk back
out of the canyon...no thank. We opted for the 1 day tour of just
seeing the big birds. After Machu Picchu and having a nasty cold
right now and me not wanting to pay to hire a donkey to carry me out
of the canyon (which is an awesome option - but I´m afraid it´d stink)
- we decided that one day of just bussing back and forth is enough.

Before Arequipa we were in Lake Titicaca! It was hysterical. We
stayed in Puno, which is the Peruvian town on the shores of Lake
Titicaca and we visited the floating reed islands on the lake called
Islas Uros. They are strange to stand on but huge and neat and I
can´t believe people made them and live there - and for a long time
too. We also visited a small town of Chuchuito down the road from
Puno which had a fertility garden - very inappropriate and hysterical
little garden we payed 5 soles to get into. Other than that and
getting colds (Titicaca was the highest altitude we´ve been so far),
we really didn´t do much since we were so under the weather.

Two more days here and then off to Lima again! We´ll be home before
you know it!

2 of 400!!

That´s right - with an incredibly early start we were able to be 2 of
the 400 allowed each day to climb Huana Picchu (which is the large
peek you see just beyond Machu Picchu in all the pictures and has
ruins of it´s own but a STEEP walk to get there). It´s also spelled
about 10 different ways depending on what sign you read within the
site. This picture is us at the top - we´re talking the top of a mountain - a steep mountain - with zero safety features and people (like the fine individuals behind us) are just climbing all around with no regard for their safety. AH!!

And when I said ¨allowed¨ I mean we were idiot enough to be excited
about it at first. Jeff was fine, I was DYING the whole time. I
don´t know if it was the altitude or the lack of shape my body is in
or being up early but I had to stop every 10 or 15 feet to catch my
breath and try not to faint and fall over the edge of the mountain.
This hike was crazy talk.

However, the top was beautiful and all our pictures look kinda fake.
Postcard fake. After Huana Picchu, with my legs shaking from the
effort, we climbed back down to Machu Picchu and had a look around
those ruins which are also amazing. No, we did not do the Incan
trail. For starters, we are really lazy people. Also, my friend -
whom I shall not name but you know who you are - said that she got a
bug in her head when she did it. NEVER.

I have a few goals in life and one of them happens to be to never let
anything nest within my head. Gotta have goals, gotta have goals.

Anyway we have about a billion pictures up on photobucket of all this
along with some other things we´ve done since that day (which was 2
days ago and my calves are still sore).

We´ve checked out the amazing salt flats-salinas-salt pools, whatever
they are called. You drive off into the mountain area near Urubamba
and all of the sudden you´re looking down over a cliff towards
hundreds (literally) of pools of salt being produced. The pictures
are awesome and the view was incredible. We got to walk around them a
bit - careful not to fall in one or step in any of it - and then we
were off to Moray.

Moray is a big ol´hole in the ground made of a ton of terraces set up
in concentric circles that the Incas used to test out
farming-agriculture. It´s HUGE - a lot bigger than we expected and
since I was still in sad shape from MP, I made Jeff climb down to the
bottom all by his lonesome but that made for some good photo ops of
him down there.

We´re back in Cusco now and tomorrow we´re headed out to Lake Titicaca
to check out the floating islands and all that the area has to offer.

Sacred Valley

So we´ve now been through the Sacred Valley - and really, who needs toilet seats, anyway? We started in Pisac for
the popular Market they have there. It supposedly is only on
Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays but we were there for a few days and
it was every day. Nice market, cute town and we got to see some of
Pisac´s ruins. We didn´t realize how expensive it would be (even
though our crappy book told us) so we ended up buying the big pass
that gets you into about 15 places around the Sacred Valley and now we
really have some sights to see. We have to see them, we´ve already
paid for it!

They were big ruins and took about 2 hours to get through with a lot
of walking up and down. We met a nice girl from Venezuela on the way
there and shared a taxi with her and she kept saying thank goodness
she met us because she would have been lost in the ruins without us.
We were lost too, but three people finding their way is more
comforting I guess. They usually have blue arrows to guide you but
sometimes they just let you kinda feel your way out - not so awesome.

After Pisac we headed for Ollantaytambo (Oh-yawn-tay-tambo) where we
stayed one night and saw THEIR ruins. There are ruins everywhere.
Also quite the hike uphill and this time we were joined by a billion
tour groups - which are a pain to get around on tiny trails when one
side is just a drop off to a long fall below. But we got to see some
beautiful scenery up there and although our camera died about 10
minutes into it, we posted as much as we could on Photobucket!

Now we´re in Aguas Calientes - which is the town closest to Machu
Picchu. We plan to get up around 430 am to head over to MP and
hopefully (cross your fingers) be 2 of the 400 people allowed each day
to see Hyuana Picchu - the highest part that´s supposed to be amazing,
although not for the faint of heart. I guess the climb up to it is
steep and you hang onto a rope most of the time. And it takes and
hour and a half. Sa-weet. Hopefully our out of shape bodies can
handle it. We´ve got to run into MP, find the area where you sign up
and then wait in some line. Sounds complicated but I think we can
manage. I hope. So after today we´ll have pictures of the infamous
Machu Picchu! Woohoo!

As some of you know we´ll also be heading home soon for a bit. We´ll
be back in Chicago for the month of June and then gone again for
another month visiting friends and family in Europe - specifically for
Sarah Wild´s wedding but we´re tacking on some other fun excursions.
So after Machu Picchu we have to start booking it through the rest of
Peru we want to see before it´s time to head home! Lots to do!