Ok so it is time to continue the Peruvian adventure. Sorry for the delay in information, but life and lack of internet access caught up with me. Please scroll down and read the previous post if you forgot where we were in peru. I last left you on our tour thru Colca Canyon.


The hightlight of the colca canyon tour is the flight of the condors. we arrived at the nesting area super early in the morning (way too many 4AM wakeups on the peruvian adventure vacation) to watch the condors fly by. they fly very close to your head. and are very big. Adam took lots of good fotos of the birds, but I'll only post a few classics for viewer boredome factors.







After watching the condors we bagan our trek back to Chivay, where we were forced to eat a very unappealing buffet. I think I just had rice and bananas. Adam had hard alpaca. Some members of our tour group ate the fresh raw fruit and vegetables. I also witnessed the same lady drinking water out of the bathroom sink. She must have the GI track of a rock. Speaking of rocks, here is a foto of said lady and her husband playing rock paper scizzors.


and here is a foto of adam after eating the dry alpaca. it is so sunny everywhere. well everywhere but Lima.


We arrived back in Arequipa later that night. Originally we had planned to stay in Arequipa that night, but for bus schedule reasons, we had to bus out to Cuzco immediately. This turned out to be very fortunate for us as the huge earthquake rocked that coast the very next day. We felt it in Cuzco (on the other side of the Andes!), but I would have had a meltdown if it had been any stronger. I have decided I do not like earthquakes. I digress.

So we took an overnight bus from Arequipa to Cuzco. It was very "de lujo" (luxurious) and actually had a bus attendant that rolled down the center aisle with a cart and handed out meals! We thought for sure we would get hours of sleep on the bus. I think I actually did sleep a little, but Adam was a pinch uncomfortable as the heat was (apparently) blasting out of the vent near his (assigned) seat. Even after taking off layer after layer there was no relief from the heat. I finally offerred to switch seats with him because I could not stand to watch this torture any more. I didn't notice the heat blasting, but Adam insists they must have turned it off. I did however notice the large puddle of sweat i was forced to sit in. True love. its the only reason i sat there. is this too much info? hmmm..... so anyway, we arrive in cuzco early morning and cab it to our hostel. Our cab driver took us to the right road, but failed to mention that we had to climeb 2,000 steps to get to our hostel. we finally arrived. Glad we chose to stay at a hostel on top of a hill in the city where it is impossible to do anything without getting short of breath. but the hostel did have a stellar view!



The people who ran the hostel were very friendly and gave us breakfast right away. It was the typical peruvian breafast which we were very accustomed to by this point: hard hollow roll, jam, butter, and tea. The people were also key in helping us by tickets to machu picchu which is much more complicated to get to then one would think (more on that later).



ok i need to study for my midterm now. the peruvian adenture will be continued. highlights to come: major earthquake, enchanting views of machu piccu, and lynn puking everwhere.