Cuzco

Hola from Cuzco!

JP and I have been here since Wednesday morning, and this is basically the first chance we have had to get online.  Apologies for the blog silence, but we left Tacna last Wednesday, flew overnight to Dallas to spend a fun but rainy long weekend celebrating JP´s little brother´s wedding, and we also got to hang out with my mom. We left Dallas Monday morning for Lima, spent Tuesday there organizing things for the Brophy trip (that was mostly JP--I was just along for the ride) and then flew to Cuzco.

Cuzco is beautiful, and is at over 11,000 feet above sea level, and the main town is in the middle of a beautiful valley.  Cuzco was also the historic capital of the Incas, so there are a lot of interesting Incan ruins in the surrounding areas.  Yesterday we joined a group tour (reluctantly, but it was cheap!) to visit three of the major ruin sites in the Sacred Valley, which is basically between here and Machu Picchu.  The sites were great, but being with a group of 30 people made it sort of slow going from place to place.  Today, in contrast, we went by ourselves and visited 4 ruin sites within walking distance of Cuzco, which was a much more pleasant experience since we got to go at our own pace...even though we did end up walking about 10 miles.  Since we are at an internet cafe, we can´t show you any of the tons of pictures we have taken already, but there is a lot to look forward to when we get back to Tacna.

We wanted to see the sites but we are also getting ready for our hike to Machu Picchu, which starts on Sunday.  We will be hiking for four days and then arriving to Machu Picchu on Thursday, so we are excited but hope we are in good enough shape. I will try to post again for a quick update after the hike, but we will be back in Tacna the first week in May and hope to fill you in on our travels and the wonderful sites we have seen in the last few days.

Hope all are well!