Sunday, November 29, 2009

Peru

I'm so thankful for the chance that I had to travel with 3 friends on my first trip to South America!!! We spend 8 days traveling around Peru and had a great time!!! We had a couple days in Lima, a couple days in Cusco, then took a train from Cusco to Machu Picchu where we stayed at Aguas Calientes for a night, back to Cusco for a night and then on to Puno for a couple nights. From Puno we flew to Lima and around 1:30AM we flew from Lima to Atlanta and then I flew on to Indy. It was a long overnight flight, but thankful for empty seats which gave me a chance to lay down and sleep!!!! This past week had been busy with work, Thanksgiving, and decorating for Christmas! Not sure I've processed all of my travels and the fact that I'm back in Indianapolis yet! Below are some photos:

This first photo was taken in Lima, Peru.

This is an Alpaca - we learned the difference between alpacas and lamas!!!
Machu Picchu was amazing - the ruins as well as the surrounding mountains!


This was my favorite place that we ate at in Aguas Calientes after a long day at Machu Picchu - we drank a common peruvian drink called chica morada, played cards, heard live Andian music, has little dancers for entertainment and ate pizza cooked in a wood burning oven, oh, and had coffee and cookies from Trader Joes for dessert!



Market in Peru


The day after Machu Picchu we had to wait until afternoon to catch the train so we wandered upon a trail that we though would lead to a waterfall - instead it lead straight up a mountain, and we made it to the top!!!!!!!!


Not to mention the 8 wooden ladders that also went straight up the mountain and we had to climb up and down them on our hike . . . but the view really was totally worth it!!!!


We took a bus from Cusco to Puno and this was the highest point we were at during out time in Peru - 4, 335 meters which is equivalent to 14,222 feet. Since it was raining we got the photo and then ran back to the bus.


From Puno we had a day to explore Lake Titicaca, which is huge!!!! First we stopped at the Uros Islands which was very interesting because everything is made out of reeds - including the island, boats, houses, watchtowers, etc. . . .



From there we were on the boat another 2 hours before reaching Taquile island which required a bit of a hike uphill to get to lunch and then about 500 steps down the other side of the island to return to our boat.



Will post more photos later - we had over 1,600 photos between the 4 of us - anybody interested is seeing all of them???




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1 comment:

Stacie@HobbitDoor said...

Looks like fun! So glad you were able to go!