Hi everyone! I hope you had a fantastic Thanksgiving!

We made it back from vacation the day before Thanksgiving, after traveling for what felt like forever.  Honestly, I was a little sad to get back.  Being on vacation is fun and I really enjoyed Peru.  I’ve spent the past few days trying to figure out what on Earth to write in this blog post, and I still can’t figure it out. So instead I’m going to give you a random assortment of photos and enjoyable things from out trip.

We started in Lima.  After sleeping forever, we woke up the next morning refreshed and ready to wander. So we made our way to the historic center of Lima to visit the Plaza de Armas, Cathedral and surrounding area.

As we walked around, we tried Chicha Morada a non-alcoholic drink made of purple corn.  Super tasty.

We then had lunch in Chinatown.  Peru has a large Asian population.  They call any Chinese restaurant, Chifa.  Numerous people told us to try Chifa, so we did.  Pretty tasty. 

After Lima, we headed to Cusco.

We needed to be in Cusco two days before starting the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in order to acclimate to the altitude ( 3,400 m or 11,200 ft).  That was definitely needed.  Living at sea level, going to Cusco was a big change.  The first day as we walked around, I started to feel sick.

After a while, I needed to sit (seriously I stopped pretty much every 2 minutes to sit down), because I thought I was going to faint.

Luckily, I didn’t.  Some rest and lots of water made me feel better and by the next day I was fine.  The next day we wandered around Cusco and headed up to the ruins at sacsayhuaman (just about Cusco).  We ran into a random guy who said he had tours on horses to various ruins in the area.

It was probably dumb to follow him to his ranch but we did anyway.  He led us on a cool horse tour of some ruins as promised.

That was my first time ever riding a horse.  Luckily there was very little work involved.  I basically sat there and held on tight to make sure I didn’t fall off.

After horseback riding, we were ready to try more traditional food.  So we headed back to Cusco

and had Lomo Saltado and Aji de Gallina, who traditional Peruvian dishes.  They were awesome.

I pretty much fell in love with Aji de Gallina. I’m going to have to try to make it on my own!

The rest of the day we explored the Cathedral and Jesuit church.

After some wandering, it started to rain pretty intensely.  We had our usual afternoon coffee and treat (I was seriously making it a point to have as much cake as possible on this trip) and then headed back to our hotel to rest and pack for the 4 day trek to Machu Picchu…

 

Up next… I’ll tell you about the 45k trek through the Andes to Machu Picchu!