Adios, Peru

Well, we´re off to the airport to come home.  Can´t believe enjoying all this cooler weather in Lima is going to be changed for the dry HEAT of Vegas!  We´ll arrive Thursday morning with lots of stories, pictures, and mosquito bites!

We have a few things we WON´T miss...
1.  putting toilet paper in a trash basket NEXT to the toilet
2.  the smell of mosquito repellant (and burning sensation on our skin)
3.  mosquitos
4.  living out of a suitcase and traveling lots
5.  ¨for you, lady, special price´
6.  American keyboards
7.  disinteresting smells and odors
8.  not knowing how to tip
9.  lumpy pillows and beds
10.  being cold.  being hot and humid.  being cold.  not having the right clothes
11.  no curling iron or hair dryer...pardon the pictures!
12.  noisy streets when trying to sleep at night.....incessant HONKING
13.  not being able to brush teeth with tap water
14.  no fountain drinks or iceç
15.  monkeys, sloths, snakes, and river monsters
16.  sleeping in a tent in a mummy bag
17.  limited eating, hard to find something safe
18.  white rice

Things we WILL miss about Peru
1.  Being cold, the weather, the ocean outside our hostel in Lima
2.  the cultural stuff
3.  the scenery and beautiful vistas
4.  drinking water from only a bottle...
5.  someone else doing my laundry, cleaning my bathroom, and making my bed daily
6.  driving around with no apparent rules or seat belts
7.  the airports, as we have spent much time in them
8.  not having to use a watch or clock....
9.  morning nap, afternoon nap, and evening nap
10.  the mirror at Casa Bella in Lima that made us very skinny looking!

It´s been an awesome trip and adventure and the best part is......we´re all still talking to each other!
Adios, amigos.  It´s been real.
See you in the northern hemisphere tomorrow!

Amazon Adventures

IQUITOS
We so enjoyed our time in the Amazon, the part in northern Peru based out of Iquitos.  We arrived Thursday night to stay in a hostel in Iquitos...thank goodness for window mounted air conditioners!!  We certainly were not in cold Cuzco anymore!!  Hot and very humid does not begin to describe it.  Iquitos is separated from the rest of Peru due to its location...you can only reach it by boat or plane.  There are about 20,000 bike taxis that rule the roads with no visible rules of the road, yet we witnessed no accidents.  In the morning, the company picked us up and took us over to have some breakfast before taking an extremely lame ¨walking tour¨of the neighorhood, just wasting time until the boat was ready to depart.  We finally made it to the peer and some very strong men carried our (and others) suitcases down several wabbly flights of stairs on the peer to the boat which was waiting for us.

AMAZON Ride and Lodge

We traveled along this tributary for quite some time before it opened into the real Amazon River, where the water actually changed color!  Amazing.  After about an hour, we pull up to a make-shift dock and are helped into the jungle by some other nice guys.  We walk along this really long, covered walkway to the lodge bungalows deeper in the forest.  Words can´t describe the array of jungle noises (jungle orchestra) that filled the humid air.  Our bunglalow had 3 beds and a small bathroom and was lined with screened walls.  Totally awesome!!!  At night we could hear triple the jungle noises and music made by all the different animals and insects, as well as the jungle rain...that sure cooled things off quite a bit which we appreciated.  The food was ok - always eggs and bread for breakfast, heart of palms salad, rice, and meat for lunch and dinners.  To tell you the truth, by day 4, I couldn´t even eat another bite of rice or eggs!!!  But it wasn´t that bad.  All the guys there were so helpful and nice.  We were joined in our group by the Peruvian Vazquez family from Chicago and they were lots and lots of fun.

Amazon Excursions
We did a few excursions during our 4 days, including walks through the dense jungle, visiting a native tribe, going fishing for pirahnas, being attacked by monkeys at Monkey Island, holding sloths, boa snakes, and baracuda fish that jumped into our boat, watching for pink and gray dolphins, visiting a sanctuary of caimanes and huge sea monster fish, to many rides up and down the river and walks through the jungle.  We loved the rain, especially if we were indoors, but sometimes walking in it getting drenched was fun, too.  We had to wear rubber boots because of all the mud and our pants just got filthy.  I ended up leaving both pairs of my trail pants there - in the humidity, our clothes grew!!!

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LIMA
We spent yesterday chillaxing until our ride through the rain back to Iquitos and then to the airport.  There was a mistake in our flight time, so we ended up sitting in the boring tiny airport there for more than 4 hours!!  Our bed and breakfast in Lima is really the nicest place we´ve stayed and we have enjoyed being slightly pampered with a nice bathroom, comfy beds, soft towels, and a yummy breakfast buffet and a very kind staff.  Glad to spend 2 days here!  (And we´re glad to see that the toilet and shower water is clear again...in the Amazon, it was always brown....yuck!!)  We can´t believe our 18 days ends tomorrow night and that we´ll be headed back to the hot, dry heat, but I think I speak for us all when I say...Peru has been awesome, but we´re tired of traveling and living out of a suitcase. 

This may be our last blog post for the trip...thank you for coming along with us!  We´ve enjoyed your comments through the blog, Facebook, and emails.  What an experience of a lifetime! 

Jungle Janes

Our Amazon adventure has come to a close and we are now safe and sound in Lima for our last 2 nights of our vacation.  Lots to write about, but we´re so tired that we will wait until tomorrow to post some fun stories and pictures.

Just wanted you to know we are alive and well!!!!
Now we´re going to bed.

Heading to Amazon tomorrow

Hope you enjoy the following 4 blogs about our 4 day Inca trail hike experience.

We are leaving Cuzco tomorrow for Iquitos to spend 4 nights in the Amazon in a jungle lodge.  Since there is supposed to be no electricity, we will be going offline again until next  Monday or so.

We will then spend 2 nights in Lima, and then get home to Vegas next Thursday morning.

So far, it has been a very exciting, amazing, and memorable experience in Peru and were glad to share it with you. 

Inca Trail Day 1



The beginning... so innocent and naive

 This was the day we had been looking forward to for 6 months!  We woke up early to be picked up by our bus and went around town picking up our group members from their hostels.   The bus ride was LONG and got absolutely CRAZY as we went off-roading on a single lane dirt-rocky road for an hour or two.  The crazy thing was...when an oncoming car or truck would approach and they would have to inch by each other.  Did I mention the road was next to a raging river?  Did we also mention, that he stopped on the train tracks deciding how to pass someone as Carolyn noticed a train coming in the distance.  If we could survive the busride to the entrance, then we could survive anything the hike could throw at us.   We had to go through a checkpoint and get our passports stamped , then crossed over a bridge over the Urubamba River and were on our way.  This was supposed to be the EASY day, to acclimate ourselves to hiking, to the lower altitude (we were several thousand feet lower than Cuzco) , and to get our feet wet.  We hiked for an hour, then rested at little huts, then hiked, then rested, etc. most of the day.  We passed by some very small villages of very poor dwellings and experienced our first  squatties.  We were passed by donkeys and locals along the paths as well as other groups of hikers.  It was awesome!

We had a very nice group of hikers with us.  Carlos and Manuel were our guides and we had 16 porters hauling up the kitchen tents, the dining tents, tables, chairs, our tents, food, propane tanks,  our stuff,  and many more  essentials.  They carried these things on their backs!  In our group, we had 3 from China - Julie, her hubby and his brother, 3 young men from England - Rob, Steve, and Nick, Mom and  college son from Calif - Kris and Todd, Husband and Wife from N. Carolina Rick and Brenda, and us three.   As the days went on, we laughed, shared, encouraged, and celebrated.    Compared to some of the other groups of hikers we met at rest stops and   passed on the way, we really lucked out!   The scenery was beautiful and the hike as not extremely difficult and steep, as compared to the other days come to find out!  When we arrived at our campside,  Carlos had each of the porters introduce themselves as did we.  We had a nice dinner and climbed into our tents, nestled into our mummy bags, and hoped NOT to have to get up in the night to use the squattie, because it was not close! 

After surviving the bus ride, we arrived at the beginning. 

The beginning scene - absolutely breathtaking

Home sweet home for night 1

Roomies - all cozy and happy

Hikers and Porters - Peru Treks

Inca Trail Day 2

We were jarred from our sleep about 4am to a rooster just as happy to start his day as ever!  We slept OK, but not comfortably really.  We had breakfast outside - a beautiful fresh fruit tray, yogurt, granola, etc. 

 This day, Sunday, we were to encounter Dead Womans Pass.  We definitely felt the prayers of all our families and friends as we approached this difficult section.  We spread out pretty quickly, mainly keeping with Carolyn, Rick, me, Linda, and Brenda.  We were climbing to our highest altitude of 14000 feet and you could feel the effect on our hearts and lungs. 

We began by walking next to a river with small waterfalls in a jungle for several hours.  Way cool!  We came upon a little hut-house with a potty to use and Gatorade to buy for an arm and a leg.  The paths were steep (a common theme you will see over the next few days) and absolutely beautiful.  We did not have lunch today, and we should have taken more snacks for energy, that is for sure.  At one point, a group of rainbow fairies...yes, you read it correctly, came singing up the hill.  Each in a different color leotard, tiara, and  other  stuff celebrating  Cuzcos birthday (their flag is the rainbow).  They were actually hiking in color order!  Too funny.  Once we got out of the jungle area HOURS later, the views opened up to  open range and browner colors as we got above the tree line.  We could see people as ants up along the steep inclining trail and on Dead Womans Pass at the top.  Sometimes it felt like we would never get up there!   Finally, we reached it at different times and celebrated everytime someone reached the peak.  It was freezing and windy up there.    It was so hard to breathe up there and our hearts were pounding out of our chests.  As soon as our little celebration was over, we looked around and realized that we were NOT at our destination!  We had a LONG uneven, rocky, steep climb down for several more hours before reaching camp for the night. Again, the  views were amazing as usual.  We could finally see our campground in the distance and VERY much lower than we were , and continued on for another hour or two.   We had not eaten since breakfast at 6-30am   and now it was  like 4-30pm!  Our gatorade was gone as well as our energy.  We were very weak.  The Porters clapped as we entered camp (the did each day) and gave us juice and snacks.  We felt very accomplished and grateful to have made it past the highest peak that day.  That night was our coldest night, but we were ok.

Top of Dead Womans Pass

Inca Trail Day 3

Words cannot adequately express this LONG day.  We climbed straight up and straight down TWO different 12000ft mountain passes.  They were both very beautiful and very difficult.  Definitely not for wimps!  We were hardly together, so we do not have pictures together.  This was another sort of solitary hiking day...kinda nice .  The first two hours were extremely steep  UP and then 2 hours straight down on the uneven rock steps (darn those Incas).   Up another beautiful mountain, through a bamboo forest, and there were some pretty steep places up, up, up.  About this point, I lost most of my energy, all calories (I had not eaten much), and had to take it step by step for a while.  This was my turn to fall behind the others and I was thankful for Carlos and Manuel staying behind me, at a distance so as not to push or prod, and every so often they would catch up to me and check up.  By the time I reached the peak, where the porters had set up the kitchen and dining tents, as well as a tarp to lay on, I felt  pooped.  The peak was between 2 different valleys of mountain ranges and it was soooo beautiful.  We really never stopped to rest except at lunch ... just kept going and going all day.  Great test of endurance.

We layed down a bit and it felt good to be horizontal for a little while.  After eating a little bit, because my appetite was low, I  asked if I could  start off again down ahead of the group just to get a head start.  The next several hours were spent going ONLY down on some of the steepest tall uneven steps ever.  It went on and on.  I got about a half hour head start and  really pushed myself, but carefully.  Thank goodness we had rented some great hiking poles, we would have died without them.  I was passed up by most of our group but then saw no one but porters for the next few hours.  Linda, Brenda, and Kris, along with Carlos and Manuel were somewhere behind me.  We walked through some caves-tunnels along the trail which was a little spooky at first.  

Finally, hours later, a porter pointed out to me as he was walking by the rooftop of some tents below and said that was our destination.  I was sooo happy, yet it was another hour or two before I actually arrived there!  Our campsite was down at the bottom of the sites and you had to hike back up a way to get to the bathrooms...sitties!  Finally, no more squatting!   Our tents were set up on a terrace overlooking the valley. Machu Picchu was just on the other side!   It was a little warmer, relatively speaking, during the night and I had to get up to use the  facilities..,.after  putting on my boots, and hiking back up the  hill, I found them to be locked.  DANG IT!  What to do?  So I found a secluded rock and did my business like any good camper!  We felt quite accomplished this day and saw some amazing  views that noone else would see unless they did the hike.

Notice how the vegitation changes during the day...and the steepness of the steps going up and down. Pictures cannot capture the magnitude of it!  It was an amazing experience.

Inca Trail Day 4

After a warmer nights sleep, relatively speaking, we were woken up about 3-45am, we scurried to get ready, eat quickly, and headed out to wait in line at the checkpoint with all the other groups to enter the last leg of the hike.  This was the most difficult only because it was still dark, you were using a head lamp, it was a wall hugger trail only 3 feet wide with a humongous drop on the other side.  Oh yeah, there are about 150 hikers behind you  trying to get there just as fast to see the sunrise over Machu Picchu.  The funny thing was....I was leading all of these people...no pressure!  I was practically running, as it felt, going the fastest I had ever gone on the entire trail, having all these proficient hikers right behind you like a line of ants with headlamps.  As soon as we got to the steepest staircase, where you could not even use your poles - you had to use your hands - I stepped aside and let all those people go.  I just had to catch my breath.  Brenda stopped with me, very emotional and exhausted, and we just kept moving after all the pressure of all the hikers behind you was over.  That was the only time you really saw so many other hikers on the trail.

Reaching up to the sungate, we had our first glimpse of our reward...our destination...Machu Picchu below and off in the distance.  It was quite an emotional  experience to finally see it.  We took time to take pictures before hiking the last mile down into one of the 7 wonders of the world.  Our guide  took us around...more ups and downs...and explained many things about what we were seeing.  One thing we learned is that INCA was the name of the king, not the group of  natives of the time...they are called Qechuas.  Who knew?

Upon walking around on our own for another hour or so, we headed down to the bus loading area with Rick, Brenda, Kris, Todd, and us.  We took the long switchback road down into Aguas Calientes where we later met up with the group for pizza lunch and got our certificates.  Then we had a few hours of free time there, so we all headed to get massages...there were PLENTY  of places there!!!  It was the best thing we did to work out our sore muscles.  Then we walked around the market places, which all sell the same things, and around town some.  In the evening, we all got on a backpackers train ride for 2 hours, then got on a bus for 2 hours  until we reached Cuzco again and to our hostel.  We were pretty wiped out, but soooooo glad to sleep in a warm bed, have a hot shower FINALLY , and be able to sleep in this morning.

All in all it was an amazing experience that now is just a memory.  We cannot believe that we did it, we succeeded, and that it is over.  And we are sore, but not as sore and miserable as we had expected.  Someone once said you should do something everyday that scares you to death.  We just did that for 4 days (besides the rock climbing experience last week)  and we are PROUD of our certificates and t shirts that we will wear with pride.  It was a spiritual experience,  a test of endurance, and an unforgettable  step by step to reach a goal evidence of success that we could  have.   WE are very thankful for all the thoughts and  prayers that were sent our way this past weekend...they were definitely felt. 

Happy Father's Day!!

Sending an early Happy Father's Day message to our dads and Linda's husband!!! We love you! Hope you have a great day Sunday!

Our last blog and testament

We, being of sound mind and soon to be sore bodies, leave our last blog with you until we blog again on Wednesday. We are heading to bed early because all has to be packed and stored at the hostel at 5:15am so we are ready for our 5:20 pickup. We will drive for 2.5 hours to the beginning of our trek and the end of life as we know it. We won't shower or sleep in a bed again until Late Tuesday night!! We feel ready...right now. It's the staying warm in the freezing cold tent, the carrying a heavier by the mile backpack, breathing really thin air, playing rock paper scissors to see who has to maybe share a tent with a stranger lady, the squatng to...you know what... When every leg muscle aches, and breathing extremely thin air while climbing up 3 mountain passes as high or higher than Mt Charleston. Other than that, it will just be an ordinary 4 days in the park.

So, we ask for lots of prayers and good kharma things you could send our way from now until Tuesday night!! We really are looking forward to this, the hardest adventure of our lives! Can't wait to rest on Wed and blog with as many details and pictures as possible! So for now, Robyn, Carolyn, and Linda bid you adios and hasta luego!

Cuzco

 Looking up our street, Suecia,  the flatter section!

 Cuzco itself is much bigger than we expected.  Upon looking at it from the top of a hill, we found out just how big.  They are having daily festivals where students from all the schools are in parades in full costume dancing around the main square.  The streets are cool...some are  wide enough for 2 cars, others only 1, and then there are some that are just stairs going straight up 2 blocks or more.  It is very hilly here and we are getting good exercise walking up the hill to our hostel.  Here are a few random photos of our stay in Cuzco .

Our hostel Walk On Inn

Street of stairs near us

Plaza de Armas...main plaza near our hostel where
all the festivities take place

 A cool wall

Festival dancers and buildings in plaza

Snuck a picture with a group

Central Market

THE BOYS ... as we call them... staying at our hostel
and be came friends

We really are having a great time and have enjoyed much leisure time as well.  Only a few of our activities have been scheduled, so we have been free to roam around.

Now, I know my dad wants to  know something important....what in the world am I eating down here?  We have found many gringo restaurants and so have been just fine.  We typically eat a small breakfast at the hostel and have a late lunch dinner combo in the late afternoon.  Since we are far from restaurants, at night we have chosen not to eat or to eat some top ramen they sell at the hostel which has been fine.  We found a place call JACKS that has great food as well as EL MASON on the square...great pizza.  We probably are dropping some pounds, but who cares, right?  We try to drink enough bottled water and  Gaterade as well.

It is VERY cold here as the sun sets behind the mountains and there is no heat in our rooms, so we have been quite chilly.  During the day, though, it has been quite warm and comfortable.  The cold has given us second thoughts as to how much clothing and what kind we need to bring on our  trek where we will be sleeping in tents at sometimes 11000 feet or higher.  We have tried to do a lot of walking up and down the hills and steps to get acclimated for the trek as well.   

We leave on Saturday for the trek and so will be offline until Wednesday, so look forward to checking  on Wednesday afternoon for signs of survival and hopefully some incredible pictures !!