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Wow! Been a while since we've written, eh?! Still have to throw in that "eh" every once in a while to remind ourselves that we are still Canadian! :)
We are finally getting around to documenting our various adventures, so, if you are interested, in addition to this blog we've also added two other entries: one dated March 1 from Mancora, Peru and another dated March 10 from Tena, Ecuador. This one highlights our visit with the padres in Mancora and our trip to Machu Picchu and southern Peru....
After quite a happy and relaxing bus ride from Cuenca via Guayaquil, we arrived home in Mancora around 7:30 a.m. to several motos waiting to take us a la casa. One of the funniest memories of this section of the trip is seeing my parents in a moto with all of their luggage stacked in the back...and we thought we travelled heavy! ;)
We had a great time hanging out together and just being. Below is a list of some of our highlights together:
- touring Mancora all snuggled together in Armando's moto
- supper at Sunset and walking home along the beach
- eating ceviche at Gemelitas, which is not a popular dish with any of the Norrboms as it turns out!
-dad fixing our screendoor
- presentation at Micaela school to thank us for the painting and contributions of Miracles in Mancora
- breakfast at Green Eggs and Ham and walking along the malecon
- mom riding on the moto with Shelly and hopping up like a pro!
- dad riding on the moto (apparently he was slightly more nervous on the bumpy road than mom!)
- party at our beach house with music and dancing; Alexandra and Jackie dancing Peruvian style and my parents tearing up the dance floor to a good familiar North American tune.
- candlelight supper on the patio and watching a slideshow together of our trip to date.
It was so great to just relax and enjoy being together....wish we had had a few more days, but they were days we'll never forget. :)
On to Machu Picchu and southern Peru....
We had a slight delay in finding our way to Lima after our morning flight out of Tumbes was cancelled without warning; however, the airlines put us up in a hotel for the day and we got to spend some time relaxing in Tumbes before our evening flight to Lima. Enjoyed some time watching TV, wandering the city a bit and playing some cards with the folks. Can't complain.... we made it to Lima safe and as sound as we can be. :) Here's the run down...
Day 1 (March 14): Lima
Spent the morning touring Lima and it turns out that it is a much prettier city than we realized from being there a couple of other times. Guess the benefit of going with a tour is that they take you to the pretty places. We again saw lots of government buildings, being the capital city of Peru, and lots of churches, since 95% of the population here is Catholic. The most interesting bit of this tour was going into an old monastery and going into the crypts where all the bodies were buried. There were thousands of bones everywhere and it was really quite creepy. Shelly did manage to sneak a prohibited photo of these bones, but sadly a photo lab accidentally deleted our Lima photos. We also spent some time in the markets (yet again) and enjoyed purchasing some $20 speakers in an electronics store (quite a novelty now!)
Day 2 (March 15): Cusco
We were up and out the door by 3:30 a.m. to catch an early morning flight to Cusco, center of the world for the Incas. We had breakfast at the hotel with the padres (a.k.a. parents) and then spent the morning napping. In the afternoon we took a tour of Cusco and saw some more churches, a monastery, some ruins in the city, and the Incan ruins at Sachsayhuaman (pronounced like "sexy woman" - easier to remember!) Supper at hotel and watched movies.
Day 3 (March 16): Sacred Valley
We took a full day tour of the Sacred Valley of the Incas, starting with a visit to the ruins at Ollayntaytambo, which were the most impressive ruins we'd seen so far. It was quite a hike to the top and thankfully the guide stopped a bunch of times to share some history or we would all have died. The padres, although slightly dubious, were again troopers and made it all the way to the top of the ruins. We had a great lunch buffet along the way and went shopping at the markets at Pisac. That evening back in Cusco we sought out, of course, some more markets and then we went to a Folkloric show and out to a really great pizza and chicken restaurant. Strangely, Cusco is known for its delicious pizza, My dad played hooky from the folkloric show and spent the evening at the hotel's casino. Since he was still not back to the hotel room when we returned from the show, Shelly took advantage of this opportunity to play a trick on my mom, phoning her from our room to say "please come collect her husband who was drunk and had passed out at the roulette table!." Happily, we intercepted my mom in the hallway as she was frantically heading off to retrieve her miscreant of a husband! Shelly received a spanking from my mom right there in the hallway, right after we all burst into laughter. ;)
Day 4 (March 17): Machu Picchu!
From Cusco, we took a morning three-and-a-half hour train to Aguas Calientes (the town near Machu Picchu) and then caught the bus up to Machu Picchu. The sight was as spectacular as we had all imagined and it was really amazing to imagine the Incas living there hundreds of years ago. It was nestled in a gorgeous setting, surrounded by the Andes and a mysterious fog. We spent a couple of hours touring the expansive ruins and then had lunch overlooking the site. The photos in our album say much more than I can write here, so you can check them out under our photo albums section. Upon returning to our hotel, the padres indulged themselves in receiving their first massage of a lifetime and now are hooked for life. We, on the other hand, went to find some more markets. :) Had a great supper at a quaint little Mexican joint down the street in Aguas Calientes.
Day 5 (March 18): Aguas Calientes
We filled the morning with more market shopping (no, we are NOT shopping addicts, as it might appear!) Then we spent the rainy afternoon sitting outside a local pub playing cards and drinking pitchers of pisco sours. They, unlike ceviche, were a Peruvian hit with the visiting gringos! Loads of fun....:) We caught the 5:00 train back to Cusco.
Day 6 (March 19): En route to Puno
Long bus ride today from Cusco to Puno. Stopped at a church, an Incan archaeological site, and a pre-Incas museum along the way. Upon arrival in Puno, crashed in our cozy hotel and watched TV and ate the delicious pizza that my parents had brought back for us for supper.
Day 7 (March 20): Puno, Lake Titicaca and the Uros Floating Islands
Spent the morning on Lake Titicaca and visiting the Uros Floating Islands. Lake Titicaca is partially in Peru and partially in Bolivia. There is an ongoing jesting between the two countries over whether the "caca" part of Titicaca is in Peru or Bolivia, as "caca" in Spanish means "s***"! We haven't seen the Bolivian side and we didn't get very far into the lake on the Peruvian side either, but we have our suspicions about the answer to that question ourselves. Not as gorge ous a lake as we had imagined, but it was amazing to see how they build the islands out of reeds from the lake and how the people live on these islands. It was fascinating to see how simply they live. They showed us how the natives built the islands and gave us some information about how they have to reconstruct their islands every 10 years or so. They are also lucky as it turns out...if they don't like their neighbors they can just saw them off and float away from them! Not that we'd want to do that or anything! ;) After the Islands, we had the chance to visit another Incan site and also tour a local indigenous home. It was really cool to see how people really live in rural Peru. Seems a bit like being in a time warp here a lot of times because the technology is just non-existent in so many ways and people still live off the land here. Makes us envy the simplicity at the same time as it makes us incredibly thankful to live in an industrialized nation. Upon returning to our hotel, we played cards with my parents for a couple of hours as we drank some coca tea and chewed some coca leaves. People here chew the leaves to give them a burst of energy similar to drinking coffee. We both think we'll stick to coffee. :)
Day 8 (March 21): Puno and Lima
We wandered around Puno for the morning and then played some cards before heading to Juliaca to catch our flight back to Lima. Sadly, Lima is where our trip ended and the padres caught a flight back home to the USA. We spent the night in Lima and went home to our little abode on the beach in Mancora.
It was a great time of adventuring and connecting with family and we are thankful to have had the time to spend travelling with my parents. We truly feel like chicas suertes.
Stacy y Shelly
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