life in the southern hemisphere

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que pasaaaa mis amigos?!

aahh what a whirlwind week its been. allow me to start a week ago back, last monday..

as was stated in the previous entry, we arrived in lima last monday no problem and got settled into the Flying Dog hostel in Miraflores, which is a much nicer part of Lima. On Tuesday we explored a bit of Miraflores with two new friends, Bri from Alaska and Dorsey from Maine.. they had both been around Lima for awhile before us so they showed us around a bit.. had our first legitimate Peruvian meal at a small cafe and watched a bit of whatever game was on that day, haha.

That night we played a bit of cards with the hostel bartender, Maria, and her boyfriend Enzo, and later on we taught our new friends, Viv and Ravvi from the UK, Johannes from Germany and an aussie dude called Jon, our american drinking games, along with Maria and Enzo again! haha.. fun night.

Wednesday we slept in a bit (recovered, heh) and played poker with our new friends a little later on.. 20 sole buy in, I won! haha.. went to bed a bit early as we had to wake up around 330am for our flight to Cusco.

Thursday we got into our hostel, another Flying Dog, around 730am and slept until about 2 in the afternoon after a small breakfast. Later on we had our first big, official Peruvian meal in Cusco.. Guinea Pig! haha, I kid you not, we have the pictures! wasnt bad at all, a bit like chicken but not so much meat. That night at the referral of our friend Luiggi, the guy that runs the hostel, we spoke with a local travel agency about booking a package deal for Machu Picchu and decided it was probably our best bet, as this would be, more or less, our biggest endeavor of our entire trip, costa rica included. included in the deal, we were promised a taxi ride the next day (Friday) to the train station, which was in a distant small town called Olamantycygotalacadocia (as we could never figure out how it was spelled or pronounced!), train tickets to Aguas Calientes for 7:30pm, a night at a hostel in Aguas Calientes, a bus ticket to Machu Picchu, entrance to Machu Picchu, a guided tour, bus ticket back to Aguas Calientes, and a train ticket back to O-town. Aguas Calientes is a small tourist oriented town right outside Machi Picchu. However.. not exactly everything promised was indeed provided, as we would later unfortunately find out!

On Friday, the taxi didnt come on time, and instead of booking us the 730pm train, they booked us the next available train.. at 11:30pm. This was the precursor of a giant clustering of our original plans! The taxi came around 4pm, and we drove in a packed taxi with a friend of the driver, a young boy and what looked like his grandfather, for 2 hours through the pollution infected mountain ghettos of the peruvian countryside. as we had 5 hours to kill with day turning to night, we realized sitting out in the cold could not be an option.. after having a small meal at a local diner, we set on down the road from the train station and after speaking with an extremely generous hostel owner called Ophelia, we were able to chill in the warm lobby with her and her 4 year old son for the next few hours.. how kind of them!

we finally got rolling on the train around midnight, and arrived to aguas calientes at about 130am and luckily had the owner of the hostel we were to stay at waiting for us.. honestly was not expecting it, so a pleasant surprise for sure!

as far as going to machu picchu goes, let me lay down the process.. the buses from aguas calientes that we had tickets for leave at 530am sharp, and the gates to machu picchu open at 6am. however.. if you come to the buses early enough, you were able to get a complimentary ticket to hike wayna picchu, which is actually the giant summit that is behind the ruins in all the famous postcard pictures you see. the catch though, is that only 400 are allowed to receive the tickets to hike it, so you have to either 1. get to the bus station very, very early to get in line, or 2. hike to the main gates yourself and skip the bus.

now- the travel agency back in cusco had booked us the trip to machu picchu for the day after we got into aguas calientes.. in other words, we would have to sleep about 3 hours and then turn right around and head to the bus station if we wanted to do wayna picchu! seeing that as borderline impossible as we were already sleep deprived and developing colds, our extremely awesome, generous, wonderful hostel owner, Mercedes, told us that was out of the question and to get a full nights rest and that she would help us sort everything out in the morning. she was such a huge help to us for the eventual 3 days we spent there!

in the morning, saturday now, after a nice breakfast and becoming acquainted with mercedes lovely 2 year old daughter (of whom we still do not know the name of!) mercedes took the two of us down to a local travel agent to help us get everything sorted out.. and after a few calls back to the bs travel agency back in cusco, we were able to get everything moved to the next morning.. sunday july the 4th! how ironic, huh? we were very relieved and spent the rest of the day eating, watching soccer, getting our first ever massages (which were absolutely immaculate), preparing for the next day, and finally going to sleep a bit early, as we wanted to get to the bus station early to hopefully attain wayna picchu passes.

sunday morning finally came and after all the hell we had put up with the past couple of days, things would finally work out. we got down to the bus station in time, and after riding to the top of the mountain to the machu picchu main gate, we successfully received wayna picchu passes! we were overjoyed and totally stoked.. after getting through the gates around 6am, we had an hour and a half to kill before meeting up with pedro, our tour guide, at 730am. upon first sight of machu picchu, we were absolutely awed and amazed.. it was nothing like I expected, just magnificent. we walked around and took pictures for a bit, and watched the sun creep over the surrounding mountains.. really, really cool, even got a few shots of the suns rays hitting the very top of wayna picchu, just awesome!

at 730 we met our group and had the tour for the next 2 and a half hours.. really informative, a lot of facts and myths busted, haha. turns out machu picchu is actually considered a jungle, and is only about 8000 meters up, much less than I had researched.. Cusco is higher at 10,000 feet! it was pretty chilly until the sun came up, and then it got hhhooottt.. real hot! we could have easily been in tank tops and shorts, haha. luckily we were able to get a locker and put most of our heavy clothing away.

at 10am we finally entered the gate to wayna picchu.. man oh man, what a HIKE- easily a 60-70 degree climb, nearly straight up. took about a half hour each way, so not too bad.. just a strenuous half hour each way! the view from the top was like nothing I have ever seen or even imagined.. just awesome. only thing I could maybe compare it to was the grand tetons.. but even more glorious! it was like being on top of the world. after taking a good amount of pictures, we rested and had a few cliff bars and befriended a young irish girl who we hiked back down with. after walking all the way back through the ruins, we got to the main gate, grabbed some super price gouged water and finally got on a bus back to aguas. after getting back to the hostel and having somne great showers, we met back up with the irish chick sirca, and her friends carmel and zooey for lunch. they fortunately had 730pm train tickets back to cusco, so we bid them farewell and had a long deserved, hibernation like nap. haha.. later on we were approached by a young polish couple who were looking for where to buy machu picchu tickets and we ended up giving them the full rundown on everything. after helping them find a hostel, we joined them on a trip to the local hot springs (that we didnt even know existed until meeting them!) and had a great late dinner afterward.

after bidding them farewell, we headed back and showered off (as the hot springs were preeetty grody) and got on our 10:30pm train to o-town. we arrived there around 12:30am and luckily had a van waiting for us.. after getting back to cusco at about 2am, we were hoping that Luiggi would be up to let us in.. but unfortunately, he was not! freezing and tired, we deliberated what to do for a few minutes and decided we had no choice but to find another place.. fortunately we only walked about 100 meters down the road to another hostal and after waking up the receptionist, we were able to get a double room for 30 soles each (even with hot water!) and after fogging out the room with steam to heat it up a bit, finally crashed and slept like a bear.

in the morning (this morning!) we had a delicious complementary breakfast and headed back to Flying Dog.. Luiggi had been wondering where we had been and after explaining our small misfortunes, we got another room and had a great few hours worth of sleep.

our plane from here leaves on wednesday.. and as were are both still a little under the weather (becker lost his voice! im actually pretty much fine at this point) we plan to take it easy so we are healthy for our final days in lima.

look for pictures on wednesday! that blasted usb cord is back in storage in miraflores with the rest of our stuff.. but no worries.

Im really pleased with the way things eventually worked out and am stoked to have experienced machu picchu. truly a remarkable site in the history of our world!

take it easy and I will see you all very soon!

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