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.