The Trip of a Lifetime

Firstly, I cannot believe that I haven't written in over a month. Wow. I have been very sociable and just haven't had much to blog about until this last week. The boy scene has been pretty normal...no more d!ck picks for me...
I have been planning a, pretty big, trip for the last 6 months and it is quickly approaching and turning into the trip of a lifetime. Now, as if my trip could have gotten any better, it did - last week!
I have kept in touch with, more than facebook stalking, a few people from my trip to Peru in 2013. Since Peru, I have been able to visit in person with one of the gals, Christie, from England, twice! She was living in AZ for about a month and I visited her there and she visited me in December/January 2014. When she visited CA,  I showed her around San Francisco, with a quick side trip to Napa. It was a fun visit and I am glad I was able to play tourist for a long weekend.
Christie texted me last week asking me about my summer plans and I told her about this amazing trip  that I have been planning and it dawned on me: I will be in her 'neck of the woods' so I should see if she can meet me for any part of the trip.
I brought up the idea, she checked with work and is now going to join me on the last leg of my trip. She then mentioned 'a cheeky jaunt to London,' which I responded, 'what the heck is that?! I want two!' I checked with my work and was able to extend my vacation about five days to accommodate yet another country! I just can't believe it!
So, as of today, I will be visiting at least eight cities, four countries and two continents all within 25 days. Someone pinch me! #AfroEuro trip here I come! (I guess now that I have added England to my itinerary, my new hashstag shall be #AfroEruoLand)

Advice on Traveling to Peru

Now that I have recapped our entire trip – sorry for putting you through that, but it was amazing for me to relive it! – I want to give some quick tips on how to make the most out of your trip :-)

~ Book your trip as early in advance as possible. We bought our plane tickets in April for our trip in July, the tickets were much more expensive than when we looked at prices in December and January. We ended up getting booking the Salkantay Trek and the airfare through

~ We booked our airfare and our Salkantay Trek through STA Travel. They were great to work with and offered us the best deal!

~ STA Travel works with Bamba Experience to book their Salkanta Trek. The office is located in the Milhouse Backpackers & Hotel - Calle Quera 270, Cusco, Peru (a place you can stay as well, it seemed to be a young backpackers kind of spot, a bit loud but there were always people around)

~ On the trek we were asked to give tips to the cooks, the porters and the guides. Bring enough cash for that as well as incidentals. Along the trek there are a lot of little stops to buy water, snacks and toilet paper.

~ Have toilet paper with you at.all.times! And don’t skimp on the hand sanitizer!

~ Update on the toilets: beware that the toilets rarely have toilet seats let alone toilet paper. Some you even have to manually flush!

~ Don’t drink the tap water if it hasn’t been boiled. I was told not to even brush my teeth with tap water. I was very careful and still, unfortunately, got food poisoning.

~ On that note…don’t eat in the Market…enough said…

~ I was told that most places accepted credit cards, we found that that was typically not the case: most places did not accept credit card. Bring enough Peruvian Nuevo Sol and also know that a lot of places accept American dollars too.

~ Buy something alpaca! I promise you would love it! And don't fear the "baby alpaca" labels - that just means that the alpaca has never been sheared before! :-) 

~ When at Machupicchu, stamp your passport!

Our trip to Peru was amazing. We saw beautiful sites, met fantastic people and made lifetime memories!

Machupicchu

This is the last post recapping our trip to Peru. This post also happens to be the main reason we chose to go to Peru – this allows me to relive our time at Machupicchu! We had some amazing views along the way, we got to experience some pure Peruvian culture and we met some of the most awesome people.

*Fun Fact: We visited Machupicchu on the anniversary of its discovery by Hiram Bingham on July 24, 1911. 102 years later and this site is one of the Wonders of the World (depending on the list you look at) and its popularity continues to grow each year. Check it out here.

We woke up around 4am, got our things ready and headed down to the bus terminal. We were on the 3rd bus up to Machupicchu. We waited in line and were let in at 5am, when the site opens to the public. The sun hadn’t risen and there was this beautiful glow about the ruins that offered this magical feel. I have to tell you that when I first saw the ruins, I tears welled in my eyes. It was a hard 5 days, but seeing this beautiful place made all of the muscles aches and blisters on my feet totally worth it.

Our first picture of Machupicchu, and our awesome guide Simba! (It was pretty chilly before the sun rose)

 

 

 

Before the sun rose over the mountains, there was a breathtaking view of the moon.

As the sun rose over the mountains and onto Machupicchu.

Can you see the face?? The mountain in the background: the face is facing the sky, the right is the forehead, moving left: the tall point (Huayna Picchu) is the nose, then the mouth and the point all the way to the left is the chin. Do you see it now??

 

 

 

 

 

This is a stone that mimics the shape of the mountains behind it.

Once the sun came out the temperature rose!

 

This is the house of the Condor. This is where the Inaca’s would bring their offerings to the Gods, leave it on the stone on the ground and then the Condor would come, pick up the offering and take it away. Can you make out the shape of the Condor? On the ground is it’s head and the two large boulders on the upper portion of the picture, on both sides, are its wings.

The terracing. Amazing.

 

We decided to take a short walk to the Inca Bridge.

 

The Inca Bridge is behind me.

One of the cameras in our group was able to take Panoramic pictures. We got an awesome shot of the group with Huayna Picchu in the background!

We spent a long time roaming around the ruins and imagining the Inca people living there. It was such a beautiful place and such and amazing experience, it is almost hard to put into words.

We left and headed back to Aguas Calientes for lunch and to catch our trains back to Cusco. Peru was amazing. Machupicchu was breathtaking and a definite must see.

Salkantay Trek: Day 4

We woke up and all piled into a van to go Zip Lining over the Urubamba River at Cola de Mono. It was beautiful outside and zip lining with these views was spectacular. I had never zip lined before, so this was totally out of my comfort zone…but totally worth it! We got to go on 6 different lines, back and forth over the river. Rich and I both got to go face down, aka: Superman & SuperChica, and we were also able to go together on a line.

After the first line, waiting for the second.

Rich getting ready for the Superman!

Superman!

SuperChica!

So, as mentioned before: I wasn’t feeling well on this hike…and so it became a joke between everyone that we would give a run down of the toilets and encourage our group to go or to hold it. This was the view from the toilet at the zip lining place. Yeah…amazing! {and they even had toilet paper!}

After zip lining we rode in the bus for maybe 2 hours to the start of our last portion of the actual hike. We stopped for lunch and then hiked for a couple of hours into Aguas Calientes.

We got to the town of Aguas Calientes, we put our things in our room, met up with some of our group from a beer and then showered and headed to dinner.

We had dinner, got the run down for the next day: Machupicchu, and all headed off to bed. We were getting on the first bus from Aguas Calientes to enter Machupicchu when it opened to be there for the sunrise (and when it wasn’t so crowded)

Salkantay Trek : Day 3

 

We woke up early, again, and I was starting to feel better but still not 100%. From our campsite we hiked pretty much downhill the whole way to La Playa, our lunch spot. Here 4 of our group headed for more hiking and then Machupicchu the next day, the rest of us still had another day of hiking and then we were on to Machupicchu (their tour was 4 days/3 nights).

I love waterfalls and we were able to see many this day. Day 3 was a lot more downhill.

We walked along the Urubamba River and were basically in the high jungle. We needed to wear our mosquito spray!

Rich doing his best impression of a mountain...or just being silly...no one will ever know ;-)

We made it to our campsite, set up our tents and got ready to head to Santa Theresa to relax in the natural hot springs. We got there and ordered drinks, relaxed, bathed and had a great time!

While the boys finished their drinks, Liz and I headed down to the hot springs. The attendant let us go down to the warm-water waterfalls and then told us the order in which you enter the pools, you start with the cooler pool first and make your way to the warmer pools. Liz and I had made our way into the first pool when we saw the guys coming down. They were stopped by the attendant and made to take cold showers before they entered the pool area. We were laughing so hard because they did not make us take a cold shower first. We think it was because we were girls and he didn’t want to make us take the cold shower first. HA!

After the hot springs we went back to the campsite and got ready for dinner. At this campsite there were lots of drink options, for purchase. A bunch of the guys split a bottle of Havana Club (rum) and bought a big bottle of coke – A Cuba Libre. The rest of the night was a blur while our group danced around a huge bonfire to the YMCA (x2), the Macarena and some Peruvian music on loop. We danced Salsa, laughed and agree to zip line the next day. The other groups that were there were watching from afar, and we think were jealous, of the fun we were having! We were up way to late and had a little too much fun!

Salkantay Trek : Day 2

 

We woke to hot tea and moonlight. We got dressed in our tent – Rich told me a neat trick about camping in the cold: put the clothes you are going to wear the next day in your sleeping bag to keep them warm because the last thing you want to do is put cold clothes on in the morning. Genius! I knew I married him for a reason ;-P

After breakfast we were on our way. The 2nd day was the hardest day for trekking so we all wanted to get on the move to get it over with.

We were getting close...but not quite to the top.

While on the hike we got to talk to almost everyone and really start to get to know them. Every person on our hike was so kind, friendly and open. It really made our trip so much better! We are still talking about how awesome the trek was!

We finally made it! We summited Salkantay which is at over 4500 meters – close to if not over 15,000 feet! That is the highest that both Rich and I had ever been. It was windy and very cold, but the views were totally worth it! I was so proud of my accomplishment (especially for still not feeling 100%) At the top we performed a ceremony to Salkantay, took a few pictures and made on our way to our lunch spot.

We ate lunch at a nice little old womans house (she apparently has the best Cuy (Guinea Pig in the Andes, we didn’t try it, unfortunately)) and while we ate it started to pour down rain. And then it hailed. So we all got our rain gear on and continued on our way.

Like I said, all of my outdoor gear is a different shade of blue...even my rain jacket...

We made it to the campsite for the 2nd night right before dark. We all got beers, had dinner and stayed up late chatting, laughing and learning about each other and all of our different cultures.

There were a lot of dogs running around this campsite so we had to make sure that all of our stuff was inside our tent and nothing was run away with!