(Top Photo) Me and our tourguide Cesar at Sacsayhuaman ruins outside of Cusco. (Bottom Photo) Plaza de Armas in Cusco.
This last week my parents came down to Peru to visit. After visiting Lima, we took an hour flight to the old Incan capital city of Cusco. It was the first time since September that I wore a coat and hat. Cusco is a very beutiful and clean city located at 11,000 ft in the midst of the Andes Mountains. The next few days we spent exploring the Incan Sacred Valley a short distance from Cusco. There we walked through old ruins and marveled at how skillful the Incans were. The walls they contructed are made of huge stones that weight thousands of pounds. I couldn´t believe how they moved these stones (some more than 8km) with no wheels only logs and ramps. They cut the rocks so precisely and stacked them in an interlocking design that could withstand any earthquake. Sadly when the Spanish conquered the Incan Empire they destroyed much of the Incan ruins. Over the decades earthquakes destoyed many of the Spanish cathedrals and buildings, but the Incan foundations were un hurt by the violent vibrations. I don´t know why the Spanish didn´t use Incan architecture? One interesting thing I learned while in Cusco was that when the Spanish found a sacred Incan place used for worship or some important purpose they would destroy it and build a Catholic church. That is why Cusco has so many churches for so little people at the time. They would also destroy amazing Incan buildings and use the rocks for their own buildings. Kinda sad I thought.
The next stop was the lost city of Machu Picchu. Sadly, I don´t have any digital pictures of that. Machu Picchu is a breathtaking discovery at the top of one of jungle covered mountain about 4 hours away from Cusco. It was discoverd by American Hiram Bingham in 1911 and is one of the most visited sites in South America. You can only get there by train or by hiking the famous Inca trail, which takes about 3-4 days. For me, seeing Machu Picchu was eating the cake and the frosting too! It is a place filled with spectacular views and sheer cliffs at the edges. Definately a trip worth taking if going to Peru. I´m glad Macchu Picchu is in South America because if it were in the states many of the cool places would be closed off due to law suits. I don´t think those exist here. If you would like to visit Machu Picchu I would suggest two things; staying in Aquas Calientes, the little town at the base of Machu Picchu and hiking up to the peak of Waynu Picchu ( a short hike to the peak where you can look down and see the whole world from a clouds point of view) After Cusco, dad and I went up to my site Piura, in Northern Peru near Equador. There we went to Colan beach and stayed in an old wooden house on stilts that my Peruvian parents borrowed for the weekend. You could hear the water rush under the house as the tide arose at night fall. It sounded just like those nature CDs you can buy to help you sleep. My next place I want to visit is Huaraz and see the snow covered Andes and hike around Mt. Huarascan which is over 22,000 ft. and then float down the Amazon to the jungle city of Iquitos. Too many places and too little time!
These are pictures that I took during work a day before Mother´s day. One of my friends donated a sack full of used greeting cards and a ton of blank cards. The kids cut the old cards up and glued the useful part to the blank card. I was really impressed how the kids expressed themselves with the messages they wrote to their mothers. Some of them are real poets. The lessons I learned that Saturday were that kids love to be original and use their creativity and also that something as simple as old greeting cards can be very useful and shouldn´t be thrown away.
