Peru - Day 7 & 8

I don't even know how to put the last 2 days into one post. IMPOSSIBLE. And out of my hundreds of pictures I have to just pick a few. Here we go.

First of all, middle of the night Wednesday, I woke up and had a hard time breathing. After propping myself up in bed and trying to relax as much as I could, I fell asleep after about an hour. Next morning I was still having kind of a hard time but after some more coca tea and some albuterol (thank goodness for being able to travel with doctors who have inhalers on hand) I started to feel much better.

Thursday morning we started a tour right here in Cusco. We started at Curicancha. It's basically an ancient pre-Incan temple with a colonial section and then a Catholic cathedral built over the top of it. The pre-Incan part of the temple was built they think by a people who lived here around 600 B.C. (hmm...that date's a little familiar).

Then we headed up to the hills just above Cusco and saw a few ruins up above. The first was Tambomachay. This was a little short hike and it had fountains that were supposed to make you young and fertile...too late. :)

This sign says how high you are in meters which is about 12,350 feet.

Deann, Janine, Mel, Me, & Lynley at Tambomachay.

Mel and I from up above.

Next, we went down the road a little ways and went to an enormous area full of ruins called Sacsayhuaman. It had to have been 100's of acres. It is really amazing to see some of this Incan architecture and how incredibly advanced they were in building. Through all of the earthquakes Peru has had, modern and colonial buildings are destroyed and these ancient ruins are completely solid and intact. Enormous stones fit together almost like puzzle pieces with absolutely no mortar and you can't even slide a razor blade between them.

Amazing huge boulders. How the heck did they transport them??

Then we headed down to the Sacred Valley to a town called Urabamba where we stayed the night. When we got there, I was asleep on the bus, it was about 10:30pm. When Mel woke me up, people started noticing there were no lights on anywhere and we realized this little town was out of power. We pulled into the hotel which was pretty nice, and everything was lit by candlelight. Check-in, our rooms, everything. It was kind of cool! The power had been out in the town since 6am and no one knew why. We were kind of excited for the adventure until we flushed the toilet and realized no water was filling up. Obviously their well was run by electricity. Then we started getting a little concerned...and then the power came on. Woo hoo! We felt pretty lucky.

From the courtyard of our cute hotel in Urubamba.

The next morning, we woke up and headed to Pisac. I think this was my favorite place. A cemetery in the side of the mountain, a trail along a cliff, an ancient temple with a "font" where you cleanse yourself before entering the temple (once again, a little familiar), and just beautiful scenery everywhere.

So I don't often buy from the street vendors but sometimes I have to give the little girls a little something. I love my flower on the tippy top of her forehead. And look at those cheeks!

Along the trail to the temple at Picac.

We climbed so many (hundreds and hundreds) of stairs during our day but I loved these!

Ruins of the temple at Pisac.

Being silly (we do that sometimes) after lunch.

Last on the list was Ollantaytambo. This place was pretty impressive as well. Wheat graineries up at the top of the mountains, terraced farms everywhere, more temples, Incan sculptures etched into the side of the mountain. Just amazing stuff and I learned SO much about Peruvian history. I just loved it ALL!



We returned home to Cusco tonite and our fearless leader, Chad, who knows anything and everything about Peru, invited anyone who was interested to come to a fireside after we got all checked back into the hotel. Many of are group are not LDS. He let everyone know it would be religious and that we would talk about the Book of Mormon and the similarities between the pre-Incan god Virachocha and Christ. Almost everyone showed up as well as 2 vendors outside our hotel who many of us have been talking to about the gospel this week. It was awesome! So many of the Spanish chroniclers who interviewed the ancients talked about a white god who appeared in a white robe and taught everyone to be charitable and kind and to love one another and walked on the water and told the people to look for messengers to come teach them. Just amazing stuff! After being here and walking where some of them walked, I truly look at the Book of Mormon in a whole new light.

However...I am ready to come home. Every time I see the cute little kids or babies here I just about die. I really miss Robb and the kiddos. :(

Tomorrow we fly back to Lima and tour down in Miraflores again for a little while and then fly out tomorrow night for home. It really has been an amazing experience. Being with a bunch of people who came down here on their own dime to give a free medical conference for the Peruvians and to work doing this humanitarian service has been so much fun and very fulfilling. OK, I'm giving my fingers a rest. But here's one last picture...

Sisters can apparently only be together for so long before they try to kill each other! After lunch today we were roaming the grounds of this really nice restaurant and we saw some tools one of the landscape guys was using. We saw the machete at the same time and both of us instantly had the same idea.

See you soon!