Thats a niiiice boulder

Here comes a big ol´entry: Yesterday, we got back from an amazing, incredible, unbelievable week in Peru.

Backing up a bit to Wednesday, how ´bout them Sox?! Wednesday night was both game night and the night before we left for Peru so to celebrate, a bunch of us went to Summers´ to make pancakes for dinner and watch the game. Go Medias Rojas!

So Peru...

Ten of us (nine girls and Bruce, poor boy) and our guide, Daniel, left Thursday afternoon and flew to Lima, just overnight. The next morning, we flew to Cusco and spent the day touring the Cathedral and generally poking around the town. Bruce and I were the only ones with energy by the end of the night so we tried out a few clubs in town but didn´t really find anything great. Our hostel in Cusco was amazing. It´s run by a Dutch couple who decided to adopt 12 of the street kids they found when they first came to Peru and now, 100% of the proceeds from the hostel go to feed 250 kids a day. Plus, it´s a beautiful building and breakfast Saturday morning was fantastic.

Saturday, we left Cusco and drove through Peru stopping at la Valle Sagrada (the Sacred Valley) to hike up to some ruins, at a llama and alpaca farm to learn about Peruvian weaving and get spit at by a vicuña, and to another site of ruins in Ollantaytambo. Hiking around the last site, there were a lot of little kids in traditional dress who would pose or sing songs in Quechua to have their pictures taken. I think we kinda caught them off guard when we answered them in Quichua. (Incidentally, in case anyone catches the spelling difference, Quechua and Quichua are essentially the same language but with slightly different pronunciation and a few different words. Quichua dialects are spoken more in Ecuador while Quechua ones are throughout Peru and maybe Bolivia.) That evening, we took a train from Ollantaytambo to a town called Aguas Calientes, that I am convinced is composed entirely by hostels, pizzerias and mini-grocery stores that sell trail mix and water.

Sunday morning, we hiked a part of the Inca trail. Now, you can spend around 21 days on the trail but we opted for the one day option and even that took some convincing for some people. We left the hostel at 7:20 am and hiked until 4 pm. The first part was along the train tracks where trains would pause to first sound their whistles in our ears before a barrage of camera flashes emitted from the hands of German tourists to wake us up. Once on the Camino Inca itself, we continued for hours along a surprisingly not murderous trail, periodically catching glimpses of ruins high up in the mountains or of the trail where we started, suddenly a few mountains away. We stopped to have lunch in one ruins site where we demonstrated to our Ecuatoriano and Peruano guides just how much American girls can eat. Nothing like PB & Js with a Swiss Army knife and tuna dumped right from the can since we only had those little Lance plastic cheese spreaders. Oh yeah, and the Peruano energy bars that have a certain Floam-like texture. A few hours later, we rested at another ruins site, pretty tired and slightly antsy to arrive at wherever we were headed. Suddenly, the clouds below us parted and ::cue the singing angels:: there was Machu Picchu. My only point of reference for Machu Picchu is a card from a GeoSafari game I used to have. This blew that picture out of the water. For an hour or so, we just sat on the agricultural terraces (see the pictures) above Machu Picchu and stared. That night back in Aguas Calientes, we tried to hit the thermal baths as a reward. You know there is going to be trouble when you all walk towards a pool and the men start cheering and when you turn to each other to pause and construct a plan of action, they boo. Plus the water smelled a bit like turkey. Not gonna lie. Needless to stay, we didn´t stay long. Bed was a bigger reward.

On Monday, we took a bus back up to Machu Picchu and had the whole day to poke around there. After touring with a guide for a couple hours and going into heart arrest when lunch gave us our first taste of U.S. prices in quite some time, a few of us got crazy/brave. Daniel and six of us decided to ignore our grumpy quads and calves and hike Wayna Picchu, the big mountain behind the ruins. Standing in at the base and looking up, it becomes obvious that this mountain is straight up. But you only live once right? It only took about an hour to summit but it was an intense hour with very narrow paths, a ton of old stone stairs and ropes on the inside of the trail so you can pull yourself up. There were times I really thought I was doing more rock climbing than hiking. But SO worth it. There wasn´t even land at the top, just a bunch of boulders were we crowded in to take pictures and for fear of imminent death. We reached the bottom covered in dirt, sweat and drizzle and feeling tougher than ever. Another hour or two sitting on the terraces writing in journals, listening to music or just gazing and we headed back down to town.

Tuesday, we took the train and van back to Cusco and toured yet another ruins site called Saksaywaman (spelling is inevitably way off) where we found great views of Cusco, including the shape of the city like a puma, an animal that was sacred to the Incan culture. A museum, market shopping and just strolling around the city until sunset followed. That night, we practically gorged ourselves at our last Peruvian meal, complete with live music, and ran around TVs and internet cafes stressing about the election. At 5:15 Wednesday morning, we were on our way to the airport and headed back to Quito.