New Places and New Faces: Peru.... we love you!

Buenos noches from Peru! Today was a day of sorts, to say the least. We caught a night bus from Puno to Cuzco and awoke at 5:30 AM to find ourselves stopped in traffic. After hearing varying stories of why and the distance to Cuzco, us grumpy bears with not enough sleep and freezing cold decided to strap on our 40 lb. packs and trek to Cuzco. After walking 5 minutes we realized it was a protest (rumored to be due to gas prices, but how would we know not speaking the language and all) with rocks and glass strewn about the road for miles. Fun! We played "I hate walking when...," filling in the blank with such expressions as "I have no idea how long we have to walk" and "I have socks and sandals on and just stubbed my toe!" After a glorious 4 hour walk, we reached the point of taxis, one of which delivered us to the Cuzco city center. Now, we only had about 10 hours to kill until our next bus ride (22 hours) to Lima. After breakfast and checking to make sure our next ride was on schedule, we sat on a park bench for 3 hours enjoying the sun. Now, we've finished dinner and only have a couple hours to departure for Lima. By the way, bus food (at least on Cruz del Sur) is atrocious, period.

So, to catch you up, we hung out in Miraflores (a district of Lima) for a couple days after arriving in Peru. Walked along the coast and did some laundry... oh, and Lins got her nose pierced! Walked the wrong way to find bus tickets one day and spent 8 hours when it could have been done in 3... nice free tour of the city. Also helped ourselves to several Pisco Sours, a Peruvian drink made of grape liquor (Pisco), sweet & sour mix and egg whites. Yum!

Headed to Cuzco on a night bus and fell in love with the city at first sight. Ran into a religious parade Sunday morning, during which time we silly stringed and witnessed masked people dancing. Decided to book a mountain bike/trek tour to Machu Picchu and left anxious as kids on Christmas morning. About halfway down an Andean mountain on our bikes, a fellow trekker crashed and we ended up loading the van to head to the nearest hospital which was no help without a doctor (not to mention the turkeys and stray dogs at the entrance). He was rushed back to Cuzco with his friend, Alex, and Jack, the third in their trio, stayed back. Now some may say Jack was forced to be our friend as it was just the three of us left, but we believe our charming personalities did the trick. Other new peeps ended up in our group and over the next 2 days we hiked our butts off (along parts of the original Inca Trail) to make it to Aguas Calientes, the town at the base of Machu Picchu. Alex met back up with us and we climbed 1750 stairs at 4:30 AM to make it to Machu Picchu by sunrise. This once hidden Inca town was absolutely spectacular and more than any of us expected! After hiking more stairs for a better view and walking around the ruins, Lins and I headed back to town to rest in the Hot Springs. We ran into (or stalked) Alex and Jack and proceeded to get silly with drinks on the train ride/bus ride/connecting van ride back to Cuzco.

Chilled in Cuzco a couple days, helping our aching bodies to $10 massages and decided to head out one night. After drinking our faces off with Jack, Alex and Jean-Sebastian, we called it a night with some McD's at 7 AM. Bussed it to Puno the next night and enjoyed us some Lake Titicaca. We visited the Uros floating Islands, made entirely of reeds, and Tequile Island where the indigenous men wear red hats if married, red and white hats if single and black hats if they're the leader. The views were stunning! Enjoyed a pitcher of Sangria before boarding the night bus back to Cuzco, which led us to our current fate of enjoying Pisco Sours at Indigo before heading back to Lima.

Flying to Iquitos on the Amazon... pink dolphins are rumored to live in the area. Lins will keep you posted with the next update.

Hugs and hugs and miss you all,
Michelle