Peru

I've been back from peru for a good month now, and i finally got through the 1,800 pictures that i took and finished uploading them all to flickr. The trip was amazing. We saw lots of beautiful country, met some amazing people and got to push ourselves mentally and physically.

we began our trip in Arequipa. This is a beautiful city situated at the base of several snow capped volcanoes in a high altitude desert type of climate. We really enjoyed our time here. We took a two day trip into the Colca Canyon region as well. i wasn't real impressed with this trip, but it was still nice. we did a bus tour. i think i might have enjoyed it more if we had hiked it, but thats ok.

we then took an overnight bus to Cusco and quickly fell in love with this city. you get harrassed a lot more in the streets to buy and eat stuff due to its higher level of tourism, but if you get away from the plaza de armes then its not so bad. while in cusco we went horseback riding, and generally explored the city. this is where we started our real adventure: the Inca Jungle Trek.

The Inca Jungle Trek was amazing. it was much harder than i expected it to be, but thats partially due to me getting a stomach bug the morning the trek began. hiking through the rainforest with low energy levels due to not eating and worrying about crapping your pants will definety put a damper on your good time, but i still loved it. i can't wait to do more trekking and backpacking in the near future. we rode mountain bikes for one day, hiked the 2nd, then took a train to aguas calientes before making our way up to Machu Picchu to explore.

one of the highlights of the trip for me was climbing Wayna Picchu. i'm not sure what it was about it that i enjoyed so much, but i really felt a sense of adventure and accomplishment. it wasn't particularly hard, but the view was amazing.

Overall it was a great trip and penny and i had a good time. I'm really looking forward to more adventures to other countries. I've got my eye on china, and anywhere south of there, as well as alaska, canada, mexico, and other more local adventures.