Vacation

Hitting the road

 
Last week was probably one of the best weeks of my life!! During my internships here in Peru, all interns get the opportunity to travel and do some sightseeing for a week. So Jayde and I decided to do it last week so we could travel with Alessandra and Dale, our friends that we met here from USU. The places we decided to go were Iquitos (the jungle), Cusco, and Machu Pichu. They were each so different but so much fun. The first leg of our trip was to take an 8 hour bus ride to Lima then fly into Iquitos. The reason we had to fly to Iquitos is that it is only accessible by plane or boat because of the water. We arrived in Iquitos Sunday night and stayed there until Wednesday evening when we flew back into Lima.

So much rain....

Lupita the sloth

I loved Iquitos, but I think I would have enjoyed it and seen a lot more if it hadn’t been rainy season. The river had risen so much that a lot of Iquitos is under water, which means that some of the things that we wanted to do were not longer possible. The first night though I got to stay in my very first hostel. It was so cool too because it was built on the water and all the houses are floating. The only way to get from house to house was to walk over wood planks that connected each place to each other. The next day though we decided to go 5 hours into the jungle and stay in a type of resort where we had a guide who showed us around the jungle and Amazon. We didn’t just drive there though, we had to take a boat to get there and on the way, we passed a lot of houses that were almost completely submerged under water. It was actually quite sad and when I asked where they live when this happens our guide said they often times move in towards the jungle.

The Amazon River

During the time that we spent in the jungle, we took morning and night boat rides, saw tons of birds, plenty of sloths and even got to hold one, went on a walk through the jungle, and went fishing for piranhas. It was pretty awesome, I’m not going to lie. Also, the place that we stayed was a village so there were always people and kids running around. It was way old school too because there was not electricity of any kind so at night we only had flashlights or lanterns. On the plus side though was that we had a working toilet, and I’m pretty sure we were the only house that did.

The Sacred Valley

After Iquitos we flew back to Lima, then flew to Cusco. Cusco is where the Inca Empire was and is where most people think that Machu Picchu is. It is actually in a smaller city called Auges Calientes that is about 4 hours away. In order to get to Auges Calientes, we took a tour that took us to a place called Ooytatamba then took a train from there. The tour we took showed us a lot of the ruins around what is called the Sacred Valley. The Sacred Valley is where the Inca’s started before they traveled all the way up the northern coast. So we stopped at a couple of places along the way to see some stone ruins the Inca’s had built. They were pretty cool, it’s amazing to see what amazing architects they were and that was thousands of years ago before machines.

Machu Picchu

Well, on the day we were going to go to Machu Picchu, we woke up at about 6:00 because we had the great idea to save about S/40 and hike up to Machu Picchu instead of take the bus. The people at our hostel we talked to said they did it in about 50 minutes so we figured it would be no problem whatsoever. Ya, biggest mistake of my entire life!!!! Since it’s on top of a mountain, we had to climb stairs that were basically straight up and it took a lot longer than 50 minutes I will tell you that. I have never been so tired in my life and when we got there, I didn’t realize that Machu Picchu is so big and that we would have to hike around there too. So, by the end of the day I was beat.

Beautiful

Machu Picchu was huge!

When we finally got up the mountain and I caught sight of the wonder that is Machu Picchu, I decided that hiking all the way up was in fact worth it. Since it was still early morning, the clouds hadn’t risen yet since we were so high up, so it was hard to see all of it but when the clouds finally cleared….no number of pictures I took will ever compare to what I saw while there. It was huge and vast and I can’t fathom how the Inca’s were able to build it without the type of machinery that we have today. It seems impossible. We ended up spending pretty much the entire day there and when we decided to head back to the hostel, we ended up forking out the money to take the bus back down the mountain. Ya, there was no way in heck I was going to do that again, even if it was downhill.

I finally found my llama!

original peruvian clothing

Before heading back to Trujillo, we got to spend one full day in Cusco. Out of all the cities I have been to, I have decided that Cusco is my favorite. I would absolutely love to spend more time there, it is so cool and has so much history located there. We went on some tours that use to be old Inca temples until the Spanish came and converted them into monasteries. I also went shopping at several of the markets there, and all of the people were just so friendly and I was able to walk around freely and not worry at all. It is also much more touristy than Trujillo, so I think that makes a difference as well, people there spoke some English. I can’t wait to be able to speak the same language as everyone else when I get home. Although being able to speak in a completely different language than everyone else is pretty neat since they can’t understand a work I’m saying. So, I can basically say anything I want, it’s going to be hard to filter stuff when I get back. Haha

Cusco

Since Cusco was our last stop, on Sunday we took our early morning flight to Lima, then caught our bus back into Trujillo. It was nice to finally be done traveling and stay in the same place for more than one night. Even though my bed at the Aldea isn’t the best, I realized that it was heaven compared to sleeping in a different place each night for a week. On the plus side though, in about a week, I will be sleeping on my memory foam mattress…YES!!!!