the trip with the fam

Hello to any and all loyal readers! I've been taking forever to get back, this time. I stopped taking pictures immediately after saying I'd start that new 365 project. Then, when I decided it was just my 'when I get around to it' project, I felt relief and haven't thought of it since. Bleh. But here is a brief summary of our trip with the in-laws!

Day 1- We met them at the airport in Lima, went to a hostal, didn't get much sleep because of heat and noisy people, then left at 4am to catch our flight to Cuzco.

Day 2- Cuzco! It is so different from Cajamarca. For one thing everyone knows how to say a sentence or 2 in English to try to sell something. "Nice painting. You like, pretty lady? Fifteen soles, 5 dollar." There is a lot of really neat history in Cuzco, I'd kinda like to spend more time there someday. It does have a higher altitude than Cajamarca. We all felt it a little, but happily it didn't completely wipe any of us out, so that we couldn't enjoy the days there.

This is on the flight to Cuzco, I've never seen snow-peaked mountains with my own eyes before, just in Watchtower pictures. :)

This is the oldest cathedral in Cuzco. It's actually built on the foundation of the Inca temple. True conquest involves putting your religious building on top of their religious building.

This is one of the famous walks through Cuzco, original Inca construction, survived all the earthquakes because they don't use mortar, they build the stones to link together like puzzle pieces, and they heavily use the trapezoid shape.

Outside of modern Cuzco is the actual old Inca city that was Cosco. (Because in Quechua Cuzco is a dirty dog with fleas.) Unfortunately it's not seen as it was, because when the Spanish came, they treated it as the quarry where they got all the rocks to do their building. It was a fascinating tour though!

Day 3- Machu Picchu. I love the mountains there! They are steep, and unlike here, covered with vegetation. I didn't realize it would be so warm there, that there you're getting closer to the jungle, thus the vegetation. Here is the train we took for part of the leg of the trip, you could look out those upper windows, straight up the side of the mountains.

Here are a few pics from Machu Picchu. I couldn't not include the typical postcard view, taken from my own camera!

We got back to the hotel at 2am, to get up at 5 the next morning for the flight back to Lima.

Day 4- Lima. We finally got to rest a little, see some neat things in Lima...

And we took another fascinating tour of these mounds they found in Miraflores. Back 30 years there were just these hills in Lima, and when they started digging, they found all these mud brick walls and buildings. Archaeologists are still excavating daily. It is from the original Lima culture, long before the Inca. Now we know where they got all their ideas for building things that were so earthquake resistant. And we thought the Inca were sooo smart. Turns out they were just local conquerers.

Day 5- We flew to Cajamarca, with the family, for 4 days. We took them to the natural hot springs to take a bath, we went to the market, and we went souvenir shopping. I'm happy to say that they got to try the guinea pig, but I am sad to say Jacob was probably hungry for a while after that. Here they are at our meeting Thursday night.

Well, that is a VERY brief overview. Expect the notice of complete photo albums soon. Or a lot later, so you won't be disappointed.