Hey, sorry guys, but it looks like there probably won’t be many updates till I get back home. There just isn’t much internet connectivity while hiking the Inkan trail, getting lost on the jungle, or stopping to help out in cities destroyed by the earthquakes here. It’s been amazing here so far, and we’ve taken over a thousand pics on the digital camera, so there’ll be a few postings coming when I get back for sure.

Till then!

Wow, it’s been longer than I thought since I updated this so I might be a little short on details.

We woke up around 3:30 packed up our gear and scrammed for the airport. Check-in went fairly smoothly. Walking around the airport was pretty interesting as there were dozens of special handbags laying around with roosters in them that would crow (is that the right word for it?) when you walked by.

We played our first game of kemp while waiting for our flight which has now become a good contender to our games of Jin-Rummy, but is much more intense.

When our flight was finally ready to board, we got the bus that took us out to our plane on the tarmac so we could get on, which was a first for Noah. On the ride out there we tried to figure out who would have isle or window seats and tried to guess who else would be in our row, which was all overheard by Lizzy and Annabelle, who we’d meet later.

The rest of the flight to Cuzco was nothing short of ordinary until it came time to land. The city is surrounded by mountain peaks and so the pilot had to circle around it to come in at the right angle and gently bring the plane down in the valley between the two steep ridges. I had been told that this was a pretty spectacular thing before coming, but there really aren’t words enough to describe how scary/cool this was.

After landing and getting our bags, we headed for our hostel, paying 15/s for the ride, which is about 5x what it should have been, but still only works out to about $5. But that’s what we get for not knowing the going rate or how far it’d really be.

When we got there, the hostel was already really close to being over booked and so we got put on a wait list and had to come back around 1 to see if there was a spot for us or not, but it was very likely that there would be. This is when we first officially met Lizzy and Annabelle, although we had seen them at the Cuzco airport. We’ve been crossing paths ever since.

While we had about 3-4 hours to kill we figured that we’d go to town, finish paying for our Machu Pichu trip and try to make plans to go to the jungle. This of course required Dave, Noah, and myself to go to the ATM (which took forever to find) while Tom stayed back at the travel agency. Along the way we ended up seeing some sort of parade for a local patroned saint, which delayed us even more. So when we got back to the agent’s place Tom was standing outside pacing nervous that we’d be late to check into the hostel and could potentially lose our room, rightfully so since we thought it was 12:55 and it was quite a walk.

So we ran back up the hill to Hostel Loki (which is no short feat at this altitude), and went to the front desk, where they were very laid back and they gave us a tour and told us to relax for a bit and to check back a little after one. This seemed a little confusing to us until we re-checked the time 10 minutes later when we had settled into afore-mentioned hammocks and realized that it was only 12-10 or so and that we had just misread the clock earlier.

So we hung out, got some lunch at the hostel, checked in, showered and took a much deserved nap. We were planning on getting guinea pig for Thanksgiving dinner, but Tom found this ‘traditional’ Thanksgiving dinner that some other people from the hostel were going to so we decided to do that.

This turned out to be one of the better decisions of the trip thus far. They had eggnog, turkey, cranberry sauce (if you can call it that), apple and pumpkin pie and slices of corn on the cob (sort of weird). We all paired up with someone else, myself and Noah with Lizzy and Annabelle, and had a pretty good conversations over dinner and a good time all around.

After this we all went out to a near by club. When we walked in everyone was doing the specific line dances for whatever song was on at the time (think latin american dance music with specific dances like the Marcarana), but this quickly switched over to normal club like music. Noah, Lizzy, Annabell and I weren’t really feeling it all that much so we decided to head on back to the hostel.

On the way there we walked through one of the larger parks in the area and were immediately attacked by a swarm of Chicklet pushing 8 year olds. We gave in and game them 1/s ($0.33) for a pack and were immediately asked to share. We traded for a picture of all of them which I wish I could include here, but I still can’t upload photo’s yet. Noah danced with a dog, we had sliding contests in our socks by the fountain and road lama statues. Back at the hostel we played kemp, the girls went to bed, and Noah and I stayed up waiting for Dave and Tom, who had a few stories of their own, and then headed to bed. My kind of night.

We´re here! After hanging out in LA for the better part of a week, doing just about anything but planning for this trip, we´re finally here.

We left for the airport last night at about 9pm, and things started off about the way we expected they would right from the start. We had our flight on Taca airlines, which was operated by United. So of course we went to the Taca terminal, which is on the opposite side of the airport than United and had to walk all the way across. We raced luggage carts and climbed walls to make some new long-cuts up, and so it was pretty fun.

Once in it turns out that there was some confusion over our flight. Apparently it was drastically oversold, so they tried to increase the size of the plane, and so we had to wait before we could check in. After a game of rummy this all went fine.

So through security we go and get to our gate and there´s near pandemonium. Apparently they didn´t increase the size of the plane and so they were looking for people to bump. They were only offering $400 though and our trip is already quite packed so we decided to just keep our seats.

The ride to El Salvador was incredibly smooth. So smooth in fact that I had fell asleep before we took off and didn´t wake up until we almost were ready to land. It was great. We got breakfast at the airport after landing and then caught our next plane.

Arriving in Lima around 2pm, we still had a lot to do. Our last minute attempts to reserver a spot to hike Machu Picchu were a failure because the limit for the days we wanted had already been reached. We swapped that and the jungle and tried some new dates, but still hadn´t heard back. On top of this, we weren´t able to book plane tickets to Cuzco because it was too last minute and so had to do that in person.

So right off the plane, Tom found someone to ´help´us. He treked us out of the airport, through the parking lot, and across the street to a travel agency. I was sort of ticked about this because I knew we were only going to get ripped off this way but was sort of out numbered. After 2 travel agencies and lots of bartering we actually got prices about the same as what we saw online and bought them. We checked our email and found that our new dates for Machu were good and that we needed to send them a deposit via Western Union and so we set off to do that.

Once that was complete we found a $8 taxi ride to the part of town 45 minutes away where we wanted to stay. We´re at this really awesome hostel called Loki´s Backpackers (the god of mischief and illusion? Not a bad place!). After dropping our stuff off we went out for a walk, got some Peruvians food, and hung out at a near by park before getting a proper dinner.

Now we´re all taking turns taking a shower and hanging out before having an early night to bed since we need to be at the airport tomorrow at 4am (which means getting up at 2:30-3:00), which is a real shame since its so nice here. But maybe we´ll visit again on our way back through here later on.

Anyways, the ´queue´for the computer is getting long so I´ll leave it at that! Till next time!