Peru With Friends!

Cusco, Peru is great. When I say great, I really mean beautiful. When I say beautiful, I really mean that it is too good to be true and that is why I am very excited to write this blog.

Cusco is way high in the Andes Mountains so it is hard to breathe at first but you drink LOTS of water. Because it is way high up, it looks amazing. Coming in on the plane is so exciting.  Window seats are the best on the plane to see the view.  Everywhere you look, you see a mountains and blue sky. But that is not all,  the town of Cusco is really cool.  It is the town you fly to if you are going to Manchu Picchu. Manchu Picchu is still pretty far from Cusco, but it is the closest town you can fly to.  It is a big town but it feels like a small village. The square in the middle is great with no cars.  The sky is so clear too so it is hot in the sun but gets really cold at night. They have artists everywhere too.  We met a nice one and bought some of his drawings. You can sit in the square for hours.  It is great!  

We took a great tour. The best part of the tour was the market. It had anything you good imagine.  Name something and I bet you could buy it there!  Fruit, toys, candy, jewelry, natural medicine, food vendors, meats, herbs, flowers, EVERYTHING! We also went to an Inka ruin that use to be covered in gold before the Spanish invaded and stole the gold off the walls. The Inkas were even going to give the Spanish as much gold as they wanted but they still killed the Inkas. We saw a mistake in the wall that the Inkas patched.  That was cool because they are known to make buildings that still stand in a country that has earthquakes. I loved seeing their mistake.  

Papa Bear broke his arm in Peru. It was so sad. I made him a cast and fixed it. 

The best part of Cusco was when my friends came! We had 6 friends show up! It was my godmother’s birthday and we made a big party out of it.  We decorated her room in each hotel! It was so fun. We showed our friends around Cusco on the first day. It was fun because we found crazy cool out of the way places. One was like being in Pirates of the Caribbean. 

We left Cusco and had a great adventure heading to the Inkas’ Sacred Valley. They had a market on the side of the road that was so cool.  It had llamas, jewelry and toys. It was a fun trip because we were all in a van together.  We also made stops to an Inka village. The cool part was a fresh water stream that was fed by a glacier that the Inkas used in their village. The water tasted so good!  We had fun playing in the ruins. The windows were super fun to play in and we liked to pretend which rooms were the bedrooms and bathrooms.  

Our next ruins were in Ollytaytambo in the Sacred Valley. It was a lot of climbing! I was so tired! Can you believe the Inkas did those climbs with HUGE stones?! The valley is really great. You look up and see Inka ruins everywhere. Our hotel was right on a river and it had hammocks and flowers everywhere. We even had a visitor across the river. A big bull! 

We also found the best corn ever.  It was the biggest corn I have ever seen.  We also saw a lady selling cooked guinea pigs on the side of the road.  They are not that cute dead. 

The next day was the train ride to the little town at the foot of Manchu Picchu. The little town is called Aqua Calientes because it has hot springs. The train ride is cool because the train has windows in the ceiling so you can see everything! Aqua Calientes is a super little town with markets and parties every night. 

You take a bus to Manchu Picchu. The bus is crazy! Is feels like circles but it is up and up and up the mountain. Weaving back and forth up the mountain.  The view is beautiful as you go up. 

When we finally get to Manchu Picchu, it was like Oh My Gosh!!!! It really is amazing up there.  The crazy thing is how many things they built. They used the stones that were up at the top of the mountain but they built so much!! Our tour guide told us that they just recently started to believe it was built as a school and not a palace.  It took 80 years to build but they only used it for 40 years before it was abandoned. And the people only lived for about 35 years each and had children as early as 10 years old!!! Standing in the  middle of Manch Picchu is cool because you can see a trail they made that is through all the mountains so they could walk to Equador! They have a big tall mountain with ruins that is the Moon Temple and another tall mountain that is the Sun Temple. 

Oh man, AFTER we got done with our tour of walking ALL over Manch Picchu which is lots of climbing, we did another hike and it was hours along a train tracks to a water fall. We had no idea it would be a 3 hour walk!!! Each way!!!! We were so hot and got home at dark! What an adventure that was. We did all that while Fabio ( my godmother’s boyfriend) took the bus back to the hotel to take a nap. The hike even was across a rotten bridge full of holes! That was exciting! Daredevils!! The water fall at the end was big and beautiful. 

The next day, we went back to Manchu Picchu. The three of us kids slept the whole way there on the bus because we were still so tired!!! But we woke up fast when we got there.  Dylan and I were so excited to not have a tour guide. That meant we could explore wherever we wanted to. It was a dream come true!  We climber the Sun Temple.  It was crazy hard!!! The trail is super thin and the drop off is super far. You could die if you tripped!! It was worth it. The view up there was amazing. Someone even got engaged at the top of the Sun Gate!!! 

After Manchu Picchu, we all went back to Cusco together and had to say goodbye. I was headed to the Amazon Jungle… Welcome to the Jungle!!!

We flew into a town at the mouth of the Amazon River. Our guide met us at the airport and took us to the port where we caught a boat to our lodge. It was a long boat ride too. The amazon has thick brown water. It is cool to see the Amazon River’s water come together with the black River water where the port was.  Our first adventure in the Amazon River was a long canoe trip. It went  all the way into the night. It was really cool.  We saw a lot of birds!

This is where we stayed. 

We took a boat to see the famous Amazing River pink dolphins early the next morning. They were super cute and playful.  The boy dolphins are more pink.   We also went fishing for piranhas!!! We spent the rest of the day exploring the jungle and riding in boats.  I was so tired, I fell asleep early but Mommy said the sounds were crazy cool at night. There is no electricity and we sleep under mosquito nets. Best part is there are monkeys everywhere!

Our finally jungle adventure was with lots of animals! We went to a place we’re injured animals from the jungle good and get healed. Sloths, birds, monkeys, turtles, and snakes!!!

This is Oscar. He was our guide for the 3 days we were in the jungle. He was very nice. 
Well, bye!!!! Hope you liked Peru as much as I did!!