Hello World

It's been a long time since I've been active online. Not a lot of time to update, but now that we're back in Lima we have easy access to a computer and time to go online. So here's a big update to let you know what life has been like...

Right after my last update, I got sick. Not so sick that I was puking and stuff, but sick enough to be stuck in bed wearing many layers of clothes. Unfortunately, this meant flying to Lima while sick, then some wasted time in Lima. During my sick time, Yoontae had to venture out alone and he wouldn't stop complaining about how boring and stupid I was for being sick. So helpful, huh? After a few days, I recovered to my full health and so we did explore a tiny bit of Lima before we left for Cusco. In Cusco, life got crazy which is why we were unable to email or check facebook. We woke up the first morning at 6:30 AM to catch a van to take an 8 hour trip (half of which was on unpaved roads). We got out of the van at a ghetto train station and took the most efficient train in the universe. It was about as fast as a power-walking person and it stopped or changed direction about 6 times. The train took us to Aguas Calientes, which is the small town at the base of Machu Picchu. If you don't even know what Machu Picchu is, look it up 'cause you're dumb. In Aguas Calientes, we went to sleep around 10:30 PM, nice and early.

We woke up at 2:30 AM, thinking it was 3:30 AM, went back to sleep and then woke up for reals at the REAL 3:30 AM, then climbed about 1300 feet in altitude on uneven stone stairs. In pitch-black darkness. It was hard. We got to Machu Picchu and looked around, but it was disappointing because the clouds and fog were so thick that we couldn't even see most of the ruins. At 7 AM, we went to Wayna Picchu, the mountain overlooking Machu Picchu and climbed that too. That was another 1200 feet climb, but on steeper steps. We needed ropes to climb up on some parts, and my calves really burned. From the top, the view was great because the fog cleared up. Pictures are up on Facebook, but only a few of them. We actually took about 500 pictures. So now we were about 8900 feet above sea level, loving the view, but it was time to climb back down. So we did, and it was more pain for my skinny little legs, but we got down in time to explore Machu Picchu some more. And we saw llamas and we touched them too. It was awesome (pictures of this on Facebook too). At noon, we left Aguas Calientes, took the crappy, inefficient train back to the van, took the van another 9 hours back to Cusco and knocked out around 11ish.

The next morning, we woke up at 6:30 again and took a tour around the Sacred Valley looking at more ruins. I don't feel like writing about it so if you even care what we did, you can ask me later. But you probably don't even care. We stopped at a buffet (part of the tour) and some French people marvelled at my abnormal stomach capacity (I ate 3 full plates of food, 1 plate of just chips and guacamole, and then a banana). I ate so much that I had to make a stop at the bathroom, and I made the whole bus wait while I "dropped off some kids." It was worth it though. Back in Cusco, we ate llama meat, bought a ton of snacks in the market, and laid in bed watching Van Helsing and being fat.

There are about a bajillion details that I'm skipping over, but it's way too hard to write everything that has happened. We've really done a lot, but this only covers the very essentials. We've seen and learned a lot over the past few days but it's too complicated and we are both too lazy to write about stuff. So tough luck, just go look at pictures on Facebook and ask me for better stories when I get back. Blogging is too hard.

P.S. Sorry this post is so crappy, but we really are very, very tired. I'll try to make the pictures on Facebook fun though. I promise.