Karen discovered a feature of

Karen discovered a feature of my photo gallery that I knew was there, but had never used — the slide show. It’s fantasic! It’ll automatically go through all 461 of my Peru pictures in 10-20 minutes! I can relive the trip over and over again. Happy sigh.
Since I haven’t captioned any of the pictures, and probably won’t until I at least finish the trip report, here are a few of the better ones:

On our first day in Cusco after having flown directly from sea level to 11,000 feet, four of us decided “screw the altitude” and headed up a long, steep staircase into the hills above the city. Cari and Gavin stayed at the top of the staircase while Emily and I hiked up the road around a bend in search of the Cristo Blanco. He looks very holy, doesn’t he? Funny part is that he was given to the city by a group of…Palestinians. Small world.

Here I am at the ruins of Sacsayhuaman. Yes, it is pronounced much like “sexy woman.” Alas, we forgot to take a picture of all the sexy women in our group here. This was an Incan fortress above Cusco (which was the capital city) and the head/teeth of the puma that Cusco was supposed to represent. “Qosqo” is the Quechuan spelling of the city, and means “navel of the Earth.”

Here we are rafting on the Urubamba River. At the moment, we are actually perched on a rock and posing while Jaime, our Chilean guide, takes the picture. Jaime was hilarious. The water was freaking cold.

The Inca Trail begins with little fanfare. Just a control point and a sign pointing to a bridge across the river, and ta-da, you’re on your way.

Of course, as you start, you can look behind you and see this — Wakay Willka. The name means teardrop of God, if I remember correctly. The sheer height of the mountain was stupefying. I kept turning to look back, and my eyes would come to rest where I thought the top of the mountain should be…only to find that the top was actually a few thousand feet higher still (over 18,000 feet above sea level). Amazing.

Here’s a view of Cari at our campsite for the first night on the trail. We were at 12,600 feet, and it was freaking cold (despite Cari’s lack of jackets). But the view was awesome. I thought the campsites couldn’t get any better, but I was wrong.

On our second day of hiking, we passed the ruins of Sayacmarca. The weather that day alternated between being so misty that we couldn’t see 100 feet ahead of us to clearing enough that we could see all the way to the valley below (which wasn’t much fun when we knew we had to descend all the way down just to go back up). Sayacmarca was beyond the second pass, and looked very mysterious in the mist. These were some of the most impressive ruins we passed.

Here I am at Sayacmarca. The mist has cleared a bit, but we never really saw the sun that day. I didn’t mind too much — climbing three passes kept me plenty warm enough and it would have been hot if the sun had been out.

The view from our campsite the second night. I am in love with the Andes. They are simply stunning. After exclaiming that they were awesome, stupendous, gorgeous, beautiful, amazing, and even far out, we ran out of adjectives.

This is Pauld, our Inca Trail guide and my future husband. Here he’s pretending to be a slave driver using my walking stick. In reality, all it took was a simple “let’s go girls!” to get us moving — and laughing. Pauld was awesome. I adore him. I’m moving back to Peru and marrying him as soon as I figure out how to say “I love you and want to spend the rest of my days having beautiful Peruvian/American babies with you while we trek through the Andes” in Spanish.
(For those keeping score at home, this means that in the last three years, the “loves of my life” have been 5 Swedes, one Slovakian, one first/second-generation American, and one Peruvian. Apparently, if you want to catch my eye, it helps to be cute, funny, sarcastic, outdoorsy, and foreign.)

Another amazing view of the Andes, as seen from our final campsite at Huinay Huana. Again, I have no more adjectives for how beautiful it was.

Here we all are together again at Intipunku, the Sun Gate. Karen, Becca, and Jen hiked up from Machu Picchu to meet us (they didn’t hike the trail — explanation later), and arrived about five minutes after we’d emerged from the Inca Trail to the sight of Machu Picchu below. One woman was shocked to see us. “Where did you come from?!?” she asked, alarmed. “Uh…the Inca Trail,” we replied. It was funny. And I love Pauld. (Did I mention that already?)

We returned to Machu Picchu the day after we got off the trail and climbed Huayna Picchu, the mountain you see in the background of all the photos. The trail was quite steep. More stairs = tired legs. All the hiking finally caught up to me on this day, and I could really feel my quads burning on the way up.

Here I am on top. Yet more stunning views, which never ceased to amaze me.

The sun made its best appearance during our final hours in Machu Picchu and I was able to take this “classic” shot of the ruins.

We took the train back to Cusco, had dinner with Pauld for a final time (adore him!), said our goodbyes, and flew back to Lima the next day. I can’t remember ever being sadder to realize that a vacation was over; I could hardly watch as Cusco faded outside the plane window. Gavin, Jen, Cari and I ended up with a full day in Lima thanks to our red-eye flight, so we caught a final sunset over the Pacific from the exotic locale of…a shopping mall. Asi es la vida.