A Whirlwind trip to Peru

I thought I would be leaving for Laos in early September, so my plan had been to go to orientation, spend some time in Belize, meet my mom in Peru, go back to MO for a little while, head back to Page to repack, and then fly to Laos.  Well, while in Belize, I heard from Georgetown that I wouldn't be heading to Laos until the beginning of October.  I needed to change my plans-but I'll get to that later.  First, Peru.  My mom flew from KC arriving an hour before I did from Belize City.  Upon my exit from customs, I found her sitting on a bench patiently waiting where two very nice young ladies from Miami had left her.  We got some local currency from the ATM and jumped in a taxi.  As our driver ferociously drove us into the Lima night, my mom asked a few times, "Are you sure this is safe?  Are you sure this is ok?"  "Yes mom.  This is fine.  We are totally safe." was my reply while I was thinking, "I have no idea.  I have never been here before.  If we aren't safe, it is a little too late."  Again out loud, "He had a badge, I think we're fine."

And we were fine.  Better than that, we were great.  We didn't have a lot of time to explore the country of Peru, so we focused on the big one-Machu Picchu.  According to some, it is one of the new 7 wonders.  It was wonderful. We spent 2 nights in Lima before flying to Cuzco.  We spent one night there before taking the beautiful train ride to Aguas Calientes.  We had a great time there, a couple of girls took our table at a restaurant, we got into some seriously sketchy looking hotsprings, annoyed the bus ticket lady to the point of her sighing and saying, "Yes lady" and climbed the mountain.  It was grand.  We went halfway back to Cuzco by train, took a taxi the rest of the way, stopped to shop in the lovely town of Pisac, and then spent a night in Cuzco before heading back to Lima.  Mom had an early morning flight, I didn't fly out until night so I took a tour of Lima.

Overall, we had a great trip.  It was a lot of fun and we had some unbelievably good food.  We did a lot of traveling in a short amount of time and spent a good deal of time asking the question, "Do you have my passport, or do I?"  Enjoy the photos.  Love, M.

Mom on the train

At the top

We ran into these guys repeatedly in Cuzco