vacation run down!

very quick run down of funny stuff that has gone down on this vacation. Pictures to show up jan 10th or later. Oh I miss chinese food.

Peru- I was ill the first day I arrived. Not because of the food. It was the Starbuck´s frapuccino that made me ill as I don´t normally drink coffee. We slept in the Lima airport and then we took a plane to Cusco. Cusco has an elevation of 3300 metres/1100 ft above sea level. Why does that matter? 2 words: altitude sickness

Cusco, Peru - everything looks in the state of construction and demolition with a mix of european architecture. Narrow streets, the type where when one car goes through the street, you press yourself against the wall of the buildings. Apparently we lived in a dangerous part of town but that's okay. We had a security card escort us from the taxi to our door which was probably less than 10 feet.

Friendly people. They like to approach you to sell you things and will take NO for an answer. Two funny situations:

1. teenage girls approach us to take pictures with us. first it´s just a few. Then it becomes more than 10 girls. I thought they were going to pickpocket us. They didn´t. They just wanted to take pictures.

2. We are eating and guy approaches us at the window of our restaurant to sell us paintings. We say no. He asks us if we can do him a favour. Of course I say It Depends. He wanted our help with his english because he is taking a course in english and he has an exam/test tomorrow. He wanted to know the correct grammar for "What are your healthy habits" We thought that was funny because no one would ever say a sentence like that in a casual conversation.

We did an afternoon tour to a lot of sites where they guide kept on saying Pachamama which means Mother Earth. Altitude sickness was pretty bad - we were chewing on cocoa leaves like crazy. waking up with headaches. My heart was beating like crazy when I was walking uphill on the sites. Eventually I had to buy pills.

The next day, we went to the better tourist sites such as ollyamtambo and got a chance to take the local train - clean! Oh yes. By the way, I tried to avoid public bathrooms at the tourist sites. The toilets in the restaurants are clean. We ate a bit of guinea pig. Oh yes!

Took a train to Macchu Pichu and we stayed in a hotel right beside this rushing water which made me want to pee in the middle of the night. When to macchu picchu and it was SUPER cloudy which didn´t make for good pics. Dennis felt sick . Ask me in person later if you want to know the details about macchu picchu.

took the train to Polloy and a taxi ride to Cusco. When you arrive at any kind of terminal, be it airport or bus or train, a swarm of "taxi drivers" are waiting to give you a ride. We hopped into a man´s car because he was yelling taxi at the train terminal but his car didn´t have a meter or a taxi sign on it. I guess locals get in on the tourist dollars as well. He was also trying to sell us on some tours. Luckily, he followed all the other cars back to town so we knew we weren´t going to be kidnapped into withdrawing $ from the ATM machine (we read about fake taxis).

We realized we are at the mercy of the travel agents when booking a tour. You never know what you´re getting. I´ve read a lot about bait and switch schemes.