we took a 17 hour busride (its actually not as bad as it sounds) from cuzco to pisco, where we were to visit the ¨poor man´s galapagos islands¨ aka the islas ballestas. so, cramped and tired, we emerged from our night bus to swarms of taxi drivers offering us rides into the town of pisco. a 4 sol cab ride and we were there. pisco is a shithole, as the title indicates. we fell into a terrible hostel for 15 sols a night per person (i personally felt this was pricey for how bad it was) and explored the town. it [View Full Entry]

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We left the inca trail and machu picchu very tired. we crashed in the hostel early. strangely, i awoke the next day with a lot of energy and not terribly sore. we didn´t get anything of substance accomplished besides meeting up with the british couple, james and susan, whom we met on the inca trail. we got lunch with them and that night went out for some drinking at the bars. again we took advantage of the free drink passes and got smashed. at one point we left a bar only to be accosted by a group of children, one of [View Full Entry]

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We awoke at 4am to get an early start on machu picchu day. on previous days we had woken at 5, so this wasn{t supposed to be too terrible. well, i felt like shit. chrissy did as well after her night of 6 trips to the woods to unload gallons of liquid excrement. it is incredible that she was able to push through all 42 km of the hike feeling as terrible as she did. anyway, we were ready by 4:45 am with some breakfast and coca tea in us. i still felt terrible, but excited to finally see our long [View Full Entry]

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Day 3 is supposed to be the most beautiful on the trek, and in part, it was great. but it wasn{t all shits and giggles. we began the day with a climb from camp, at 11,000 feet, up to the second pass, at about 13,000 feet. on the way we passed the first inca ruins of our trek. it was apparently some guard station on the way to machu picchu, situated on a very steep section of the trail. it is incredible that they were able to build these constructions of stone on such precarious terrain. a bit later we reached [View Full Entry]

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Day 2 is known as "challenge day". you actually only hike about 8 km, less than the 11 km of day 1, but you go from around 10,000 ft at the campsite up to 14,000 ft at the "dead womans pass". it was a lot of climbing. we took it slow, chewed a lot of coca, and got through it. this was, in my opinion, the most beautiful day. the scenery on the entire hike is very dramatic, but day 2 really was nice. the entire way up was just breathtaking, and i{m sure that my photos will not do it [View Full Entry]

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So i got my student id card with a little trickeration and was on the trail on the 12th. Day 1 was pretty tranquilo. we got picked up at our hostel at 6am and saw a bunch of other gringos on the bus. i am a little weary of talking to and meeting gringos, but they were cool. once we stopped for breakfast we met a british couple who is here travelling and then will be off to belize. there were also several australians, some gringos from Los Angeles, and 4 college kids from dartmouth. surprisingly, we all got along extremely [View Full Entry]

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cuzco is a beautiful town. it reminds me of the old beauty of prague, only cheaper and with a latin twist. all the streets are paved with cobblestones and it just has this great energy which has made the first few days of our trip wonderful. they cuzqueños (people from cuzco) have treated us very well even though it is a tourist town swimming in gringos. the only annoyance are the swarms of children selling finger puppets and quechua women with llamas offering to let us take a picture of them for a sol (30 cents). all in all, cuzco is [View Full Entry]

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We woke up after a rather poor nights sleep at the hostel. we had drank a few glasses of pisco sour and the altitude didn´t help. a side note on the altitude. now, after a day and a half of acclimatization i am feeling better, but it was rough yesterday. the slightest exertion of energy left me short of breath, and a nagging headache didn´t help matters. cuzco is at 10,600 feet or so, which is apparently childs play compared with other places we will be visiting such as potosi, the world´s highest city, or some of the trekking routes we [View Full Entry]

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After our little detour to Queens we finally arrived, a day later than expected, to Cuzco. The flight from JFK to Lima was long and i ddin´t get much sleep. LAN does have good service though, the food was good and there were plenty of movies and video games to keep me occupied during the long night of little sleep. Lima was hot, but we only had a 3 hour layover there, thank god. we were accosted immediately upon emerging from customs, but enough ¨dejame en paz¨s were sufficient to shoo them away. the flight from lima to cuzco was the [View Full Entry]

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Well I'm all packed up and about ready to take off. I have packed fairly light, though if i find i need something down in SA i'll just get it then. Wildman, Chrissy and I meet at Dulles on Thursday afternoon for our long flight out. Jason meets us there. We'll get into Cuzco on Friday morning and from there we'll figure out what to do. Our Inca Trail hike doesn't begin until the 12th so we'll have a few days to get acclimated to the altitude and to the idea of being gringos in a foreign land once again. its [View Full Entry]

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