Machu Picchu, Islands that Float, and a Little Lima

After a beauuutiful night's rest in our hostel in Aguas Calientes, we were up at 6am to hop on a bus up to... drum roll please... 

MACHU PICCHU. 

Words can't even describe the excitement in these adventurers' hearts. You see, we're just a little bit obsessed with South America, and Machu Picchu is pretty much the pinnacle of all things South American. To prove that I'm right, please watch this clip from The Motorcycle Diaries when they go to Peru:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvU6FAj70zk

Ok. Moving on to real life.

So we got off the bus at the entrance to Machu Picchu, to meet up with our tour group. When they called roll, we almost missed our name...several times... because they were calling for "Marleny," which was supposed to be me. Duh. Apparently it's a Peruvian thing, because I was called Marleny a few more times over the weekend. Who has ever been named Marleny? That's my question.

See? One of our taxi drivers was holding this sign at some point...

Our brilliant tour guide... Ab, what was his name?

After getting all checked in and stubbornly refusing the English tour, we were off. Our guide led us around the ruins for a couple of hours, telling us interesting factoids about the Inca people and their life in the ancient city.

It started out as a miserable/ rainy/ foggy day, and although we were trying to be glass-half-full-ers, assuring each other that it was just shrouded in ancient Incan mystery, we were pretty bummed that we had gone all that way and couldn't even see the ground beneath our feet.

But don't even worry, guys. By the time our tour was over, the shroud of mystery and bad weather had been lifted, and it was a perfect day to explore Machu Picchu with the remaining hours we had up there.

We found some llamas!!

Around 1pm, to get away from the sandflies (more details to come...), we said adios to that magical place to catch a bus back to Aguas Calientes to catch a train back to Ollantaytambo to catch a cab back to Cuzco to catch a bus down to Puno to catch a boat to the Floating Islands to catch a bus to Arequipa to catch a plane to Lima. Cachai?  (That's Chilean Spanish for "Got it?") Yep. That was about 28 hours of traveling, sitting on any and every kind of vehicle imaginable. 

But let's talk about the Floating Islands of Puno. So worth 28 hours of sitting.

We got to Puno around 4:45am Sunday morning from an overnight bus ride from Cuzco, and we had to be back on a bus by 9am to get to Arequipa in time for our flight to Lima. So there we were, so weary in the bus station (bus stations are our new least favorite place in the world... no soap in the bathrooms...), and as usual, we got super lucky! A friendly tour man walked up to us offering his Floating-Island-touring services, and after explaining our time restraints, he just said "no problemo," and we were off on a boat tour of the Islands, afloat on Lake Titicaca, just after the sun had risen.

Our sweet, trusty boat driver tying us up to the island

These precious ladies let us borrow their outfits during our visit...

And they even took us out for a little boat ride on their boat made of reeds!

From there, we headed to Lima via bus and plane. We arrived around 8pm, checked in to our hostel (which was SO awesome!!) and went to eat some delicious chicken before collapsing into bed. You might have noticed, by the way, that of the four nights of our trip, this was only the second time we slept in a bed. It doesn't get much more adventurous than that. We woke up Monday morning and had an hour or so to explore around Miraflores, the part of Lima where we were staying. Who knew Lima was on the coast? Not us. 

"Parque del Amor," surrounded by mosaic walls covered in quotes about amor

More scenery from our speed-tour of Lima

Oh yeah. And something else we did in Lima... count the bug bites from those ancient Incan sand flies. Grand total between the three of us= 631. That's about 631 too many. You'll be glad to know that at this point, a week later, we're in much better shape. We have plenty of photo documentation, but I don't think the world needs to see that.

Bug bites aside, this trip was just the best, and we're so very grateful for the chance we had to explore such an incredibly unique part of the world. We spoke some Quechua, we chewed some cocaine leaves (some more than others...Abby...), and we even saw some llamas. Just wonderful.