Wanderlust

Well... We're doing another South America trip. Seems like just yesterday that we were hiking on the Inca trail (because it really wasn't that long ago). And now we're going to a close neighbor to Peru.  The Inca trail trip was a quick decision where we found really affordable tickets and when the world looked like it might be emerging safely from the pandemic. We kept the trip short because we had planned to do a longer trip to hopefully Vietnam or somewhere in Southeast Asia over the winter. That was always the dream anyway. Of course, the pandemic is still going on and Southeast Asia is completely closed. We are vaccinated and boosted up now so we feel comfortable traveling to countries that will take us. We'll also take the necessary precautions of testing before we leave, wearing masks as much as possible, and socially distancing when possible. Anywaysssss, that's enough about a pandemic that will never end until more people get vaccinated/boosted.  Basically, ...

 After a restful night's sleep, we went down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. It was really good (other than the tamales that were bad). Lacey raved over the hot chocolate that was literally melted delicious chocolate. The croissants were a hit as well.  For ease of transportation sake, we stayed at the same hotel as before which was just across the street from the airport. However, all of the city's sights are a decent way away. So we packed up our backpack for a full day of being away from the hotel and ventured out in an Uber. Ubers in Peru are incredibly cheap. It was about $5 for a 35 minute trip across the city. We tipped as much as we could! We took the taxi to the main square area of Miraflores, a neighborhood of Lima. This is the main tourist part of Lima (there's a historic part of the city too but it's not visited as much).  We went to the main park to see the "cat park". There are a bunch of cats that live in the park. There was also a book f...

After the hike and the 4am wake-up calls every day, we tried our best to sleep in. In this case, sleeping in meant waking up at 6:30am haha.  We knew we needed to get a COVID test to get back into the US in a couple days and we knew we didn't want to figure that out in the big city of Lima. One of the other hikers we met said that getting a covid test in Cusco was easy. So we ventured down to the front desk to ask about it. The front desk attendant was amazing. She called the place and set up for the nurses to come at 9:30am. It was only $10 to have the nurses come to our hotel (as opposed to us taxing over to the hospital and stuff) so we did that.  We enjoyed a delicious hotel breakfast. We thought the nurses would do the test in the lobby area but they did not. They came all the way to our room and did it in there. Slightly embarrassing! We had not done any cleanup after the hike so the room was a complete disaster. I actually was about to shave when we got the call from th...

 Lacey was super tired after not sleeping well for a couple nights so she went to bed right away and slept great. I used my earplugs again and also slept well.  This was the earliest wakeup call of the trip at 4am. We were both already awake though by 3:30am. We could hear commotion starting at even 3am. The porters had to pack up and leave fast to catch a train. So everything was already taken down.  It was definitely not a leisurely breakfast. Breakfast was at the table but just out in the open (no tent). Plus, the breakfast was a bologna sandwich in a plastic bag haha. Again, not a gourmet situation.  We got dressed and ready for the big day. Our expectation was that it would only be a little hike and relatively flat so we dressed for the pictures and not for hiking. Before the porters left, we paid them their tip which was kind of awkward because they were moving around so fast and just wanted to leave.  We waited at the gate of the actual Machu Picchu with ...

4:30am is starting to be the norm and not "early". But time works differently when you're camping. We got our usual morning coca tea.  I slept super well for the first time in what felt like forever. I used earplugs to combat the snoring and they worked wonders. Lacey, however, did not sleep well at all. Poor Lace girl. We won't go into details of course but... Lacey and I both tested out the squat toilets. It was an interesting experience and felt like an accomplishment when we were done.  Breakfast was an omelette and other delicious stuff. Yummy!  The start of the hike was almost all uphill again. It was slightly chilly to start which we enjoyed. It also was pretty foggy within the valleys. The green slopes with the foggy valleys and the light morning sun was beautiful. We hiked uphill to a second pass that was not as high as the one yesterday.  As far as we know, all of the tour groups had to sleep in the same campground as us. This led to a little bit of a traff...