I heart Peru (unless im sick on a bus)

After many hours spent in various airports in the weeee morning hours, we made it to Cusco! It was freezing, and by freezing I mean by bag felt like an ice cube and my fleece did nothing to keep me from shivering. We hopped into an over-priced Taxi, ignored comments that our hotel was in a dangerous neighborhood and arrived around 8am at Los Ninos Hotel. I highly recommend it to anyone going to Cusco, its run by a Dutch woman who started this cute funky hotel to help street kids! I believe she is currently supporting about 150 kids through her schools and restaurants, not to mention how many she has personally adopted.

My mom started to feel the affects of altitude, such as being out of breathe just walking down the street, stomach issues, and then the worse came... Cut to a few days of her laying in bed, eating nothing and barely drinking some water, she slowly adjusted to the altitude so we could head into the Sacred Valley for the Sunday market.

We hired a Taxi driver for the day and headed to Pisac! We spend a few hours shopping for the glorious woolen crafts Peru is so well known for, snapping some shots of colorfully dressed women selling fruits and flowers, and generally enjoying the fact my mom was alive again!

On Monday we took a taxi back into the sacred valley and caught the Vistadome train to Aguas Calientes. This train served drinks and snacks while you cruise through the valley with glass windows above you so you can fully appreciate the magnitude of where you are - seriously, it makes our mountains look like hills.

We didnt have a reservation, so we spent a little while scouting out a nice place to stay and hit up a pizza joint for dinner. We spent a few hours playing cards and I was laughing so hard I was almost in tears. Theres nothing funnier then having your mom thinking she´s almost won a long game of cards, then sweeping in stealing her last card. Excellent.

We got up at 4am, grabbed the banana and rolls waiting for us downstairs and took off into the darkness to catch a bus up to Macchu Pichu! It was raining a little bit, last nights dinner was making it difficult for my stomach and the women selling ponchos were so annoying I seriously was going to punch them if we didnt get on a bus soon. Fortunately I didnt have to resort to violence and we started up the muddy roads looking out of fogged up windows. The sun had started to rise by the time we were in line at the top, but we couldnt see much cause of the heavy clouds that morning. At the same time Macchu Pichu has a very different vibe when its covered in clouds. Its almost like you are back in time when you are up there that early.

Turned out the llamas were in full force in Macchu Pichu that day. They were everywhere! On the stairs, the paths, fighting, mating, everything! We tromped around, climbed up to the Inca Bridge, followed around tour groups and ate some snacks. At one point my mom did slip down the steps and bent her leg back pretty far. She was alright and I insisted on her holding my hand anytime she got near a step. Seriously. We headed back down in the afternoon, had some soup and frozen lemonade (Yep Jnae, the same place), and hung out til we caught the backpacker train back to Cusco. The seats of this train are two bench seats facing eachother and are so close together that anyone who is taller then me would be insanely uncomfortable. This is why when the rows across the aisle from us had 4 European men with long legs, we couldnt help but laugh a little bit watching them try to figure out what knee fits where.

he next day we went shopping again, had a big last lunch at Jacks, said are sad goodbyes and my mom took off in a Taxi for the airport. I was really bummed. I spent the rest of the day being sad about it, she´s always joined me at the end of my trips so it was weird having so much time left which I hadnt planned out at all. I seriously didnt even have a reservation for a place to stay that night, go me! So I was able to extend my stay at the hotel one more night, and bought a ticket heading for Lima the next day.

I spent my last day in Cusco having a phone interview to work for an NGO in Santiago, then met up with some people at the Loki I worked at for food and some hanging out. Once on my bus that would take 22hrs to reach Lima, I started to feel a little sick. I virtually spent 22 hrs trying not to throw up, it was awful. THEN with about an hour left to go we ran into a road block put up by people on strike. All the stories I´d heard about people who had to walk miles with their bags, or being injured when the locals started throwing rocks at the buses trying to drive around the roadblocks flashed threw my head and I knew was feeling way too sick to handle that. Fortunately after an hour of sitting in place, traffic started to move and we were allowed to pass into Lima.

The two days I meant to spend in Lima (while I figured out some sort of plan) turned into 6 pretty quickly. I met up with Ryan, a friend of friend, doing work out in Lima. He arranged for me to go with him out to the slums of Lima, San Juan de Miraflores, and check out the amazing work being done out there. I visited health clinics, rehabilitation centers, a kindergarten and day care centers, and a maternity ward. I saw a baby getting its feet stamped, brand new mothers sleeping with their babies and the delivery room. It was quite an amazing place and Im thinking of returning to volunteer for a little bit. But first, I needed some beach time.