more peru

Sorry about the wait, I know you are all dying to know what we are up to. So here it goes:

may 16 (about): so I started feeling really sick. I was coughing all over the place, I felt like I couldn't breathe, I was sore, I had a headache and a fever...it was pretty bad. And it just kept getting worse. My teacher came in on May 18th to help me get started with school observations and I was so sick that I couldn't go with him. I felt bad too, because he came down here to help me (well, and to go to Machu Picchu), and I saw him for a total of about 5 hours during the five days he was here. I stayed in bed the whole week; I didn't even want to eat. Brad made friends with the girl who works at a little hamburger shop down the street because that is where he ate while I was sick. Now he just goes in and she knows exactly what he is going to order.

May 22: I was really sick. I could barely breathe and I didn't want to get out of bed. So I decided that I needed to go see a doctor. Brad got some time off work and helped me get to the nicest hospital in Lima; it is so nice (how nice is it?) that the president of Peru goes there. When we got there, I was shocked. It was really busy and crowded and noisy and loud and hectic. Nice facilities, but it was hard to find anything (we spent ten minutes trying to find the x ray lab). So I saw a doctor and she prescribed some medicine and cough syrup for me and I had an x ray taken of my lungs. The x ray part was fun because I was in there alone with the technician (brad was getting my prescriptions filled) and I didn't speak Spanish and she didn't speak English. It is amazing how much you can communicate through gestures.

May 26: I was feeling a little better, but even if I had felt a million times worse, it wouldn't have mattered. We were going to Cusco. The flight was uneventful (it was only an hour), and the view was amazing. We flew right over the Andes and that was all you could see. There were mountains everywhere. It was amazing. And Cusco was even more amazing. It is nestled right on top of a big mountain valley and it is beautiful. There are little patchwork farms that turn into steps on the mountain side, and it is so small and quaint. It was a nice change from Lima because there was zero pollution and the air was so clear and crisp. The elevation in Cusco is about 11,000 feet above sea level. Provo’s elevation is about 4,500 feet. So here we are, more than two miles above sea level, it is no wonder that brad starts feeling a little sick. The hostel gave us some mate de coca which is a tea-like drink that is supposed to help relieve altitude sickness, but poor brad feels awful. We had to get him some pills so he could feel better. That first night was fun and relaxing. we got our tickets for the train ride to machu picchu, walked around the plaza de armas in cusco (beautiful!), ate dinner at an Irish pub and went to bed early because we had to be at the train station early the next morning.

May 27: we woke up at 4:30am (4:30!) and got ready. We were at the train station by 5:30am and our train left at 6:00. Because Cusco is in a mountain valley (it looks like a crater from above), the train had to go through a bunch of switchbacks to get up the mountain side. The train will take one track and then reverse onto another track that goes a little bit higher and so on, until we were over the mountain side. This is a picture of Cusco from the train. It took a long time to leave Cusco, so brad and I decided to count all of the stray dogs we saw. Our final count was 210, with about 150 of those being in Cusco proper.

We arrived at the Aguas Calientes (or "machu picchu village" as the locals prefer) at about 10:00am. We got our tickets for the bus ride up to Machu Picchu and our entra nce tickets and then we ate lunch. The bus ride up to Machu Picchu is kind of scary because the buses are pretty big, the road is kind of small, it is on the side of a mountain, and sometimes we had to pass buses that were coming down. As you can see from the picture at left, those switchbacks are pretty sharp. From there it was all fun and games. To the right you will see brad and I at the caretaker's hut overlooking Machu Picchu. It is the classic picture, but better because we are in it! While we were climbing up to this place we found a little friend. The poor guy was hog-tied in the blazing sun and looked so tired and thirsty. He let us pet him and I wish we could have untied him, but we didn't want to get in trouble. Isn’t he cute? He loved being pet. Below is a picture on the other side of the ruins. At the top you can see the caretaker's hut. it didn't take us long to run all around machu picchu (it is only about five square miles) and brad's sisters had said that they climbed to the top of huchuypicchu, which is the little mountain to the left in the picture above, and it had only taken them about 40 minutes. We had about an hour and a half before we had to meet up with the family again and catch the train back to Cusco, so we decided to climb the small mountain. We started climbing and we passed this one guy sitting down and he pointed us in the right direction and the trail went down and across a ridge and then started climbing. It was really steep, and then all of a sudden we realized that we were on the wrong mountain. Instead of being on huchuypicchu, the small mountain, we were on waynapicchu, which is the significantly bigger mountain on the right. That guy that we passed that had pointed us in the "right" direction had actually been sitting in front of the trail and sign that would have taken us to the top of huchuypicchu. I don't know why we did not just turn around right when we realized our mistake, but we kept climbing. And climbing. And climbing. Like I said, significantly bigger. The trail was about 1.5-2 feet wide and it was pretty much a really big staircase built with rocks the Incas had found on the way up. It was steep and tedious and exhausting. At more than one moment I thought I was going to die. I really wasn't in shape for that kind of climbing. But I had started and I was determined to finish. And I am really glad that I did. When we finally got to the top, the view was magnificent and it was beautiful up there. You could see for miles. Plus, I would have felt bad if I had quit. I am actually really glad that we climbed it. By the time we got to the top, we had about half an hour to get back down and meet up with brad's family. We cruised down the mountain side (really scary. that trail was steep) and ran to meet up with them. In all, that hike up the side of the mountain took us about an hour and 15 minutes. Not bad. Apparently the record is 15 minutes, and I am not sure if that was up and back or just up, but that dude must have been on something.

Our train ride back was uneventful and it was nice to rest after our physical exertion. For three days after that hike my legs were burning. Like fire. Oh, and I got my first butt grab today. We were unloading some luggage and someone grabbed my butt. I thought it was brad, but when I turned around I saw some guy walking away. I haven't gotten anymore butt grabs, but I have had a few whistles, and I get tons of stares.

May 28: we went to church in Cusco, but it turns out they aren't very nice there. The services were in Spanish (of course), I didn't want to concentrate hard enough to try and understand them and brad didn't want to translate, so we ended up drawing on each other's backs during sacrament. Afterward, while I was in the bathroom, a man came up to brad, asked him if he spoke Spanish and then began chastising him for drawing on my back. And then after that, another guy asked him if he was coming to Sunday school and when brad told him no, that guy yelled at him too. Brad only spoke to two people at church that day, and both of them yelled at him. Nobody else came to greet us. And it gets better. There was a little boy sitting on the stand (maybe 10-12 years old) and during the closing song in sacrament meeting his phone rang and he answered it and kept talking right on through the prayer. Amazing. I feel bad for the investigators in that area.

After church we took a drive down to Pisac, which is an outdoor market where you can bargain for cool stuff. On the way, our driver took us by a llama farm and we got to feed and pet the llamas and alpacas. To the right you can see me trying to feed an alpaca with an awesome 80's punk rock hair-do. I was afraid it would bite my hand, so I didn't want to get too close. They also had people there spinning the alpaca yarn, dying it, and weaving (is that the right word?) into blankets and tapestries and such. It was really neat, and I wish that I had gotten more pictures of the different stages the yarn goes through, but the practice of taking pictures there is really odd. If you want to take a picture of someone, you have to ask, and usually they expect you to pay them for it. I didn't want to pay anyone, and I felt uncomfortable even asking, so I didn't. To the left is a picture courtesy of Val (brad's sister) from the window of our van. At the bottom you can see a cluster of white and blue tents which is the Pisac market. We did most of our tourist shopping here, which turned out to be a really good idea because it was cheaper here than anywhere else. When we were leaving, we exited the market and there were about fifty kids surrounding Natalie trying to sell finger puppets. When we came out and brad asked one girl if she had a spongebob finger puppet, they all ran and surrounded him. there was one girl there that couldn't have been more than four or five and she kept crying and saying "una foto, amiga si?" Brad gave her one sol (equivalent to about 30 cents in the US) and made her promise to never cry again. I don't think it worked.

When we got back to Cusco our driver took us to a nice restaurant and we had cuy, a traditional highland (meaning Andes) dish. Here is a picture of it: I’ll let you guess what it really is. Still don't know? I’ll give you a hint: it is a rodent. Another hint: people in the United States usually keep these as pets. It’s a guinea pig! That’s right folks, I have eaten guinea pig. But not the whole thing, turns out they taste really bad. What do you expect when you shove a rodent on a stick and roast it? Ugh. It was definitely an experience. I am glad I ate some, if only to say that I did. And that was Cusco/Machu Picchu. We almost missed our flight home to Lima because the line at the airport was so long, but we made it safe and sound.