Hi Michelle, Yep, I arrived in Cusco yesterday and settled into a cozy room at the Hostal Familiar. Today is a beautiful day here, bright mountain sunshine with big puffy white clouds that leap down at you. Tomorrow I´m renting a dirt bike from the boys at Inca Motors, right accross from my hostal for a return trip down the Sacred Valley, to Ollantaytambo and back. This morning as I walked down Calle Saphi, I was reminded of why I love this place - the scent of wood smoke, beautiful textiles hanging outside the artesana shops, pan pipe music drifting through [View Full Entry]

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The following was written during a 1989 ramble across Europe, which started in Lisbon. It contains the kind of gee-whiz naivete of the first time foreign traveler, but a lot of what I like about traveling is a return to wide eyed innocence and child-like delight in exotic places. 3/21/89 Airborne and London bound. Flight so far smooth and uneventful. Bear hugs at the boarding ramp for Dad and Doug, come back to us safely, amen. Watched out the window as the light bespeckled shore of Turtle Island slipped beneath me and gave way to vast black expanse of Ocean. Darkness [View Full Entry]

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Two incrdible weeks in Cusco, Ollantaytambo, Machu Picchu, and the rest of the Sacred Valley. Cusco (or Qosqo) was the center if Incan civilization. It means 'navel of the world.' I stayed at the Hostal Familiar, 661 Saphi St. in Cusco for $8 a night. Some journal entries: Deep space over Cusco, the nightly procession of stars never seen before, old Northern lights obscured by passage across the equator. Awoke this morning from exquisite burnished titanium dream painstakingly riveted. Each rivet and sheet was a conversation with mildly sinister forces. The artifact dissolved in wakefulness. [View Full Entry]

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