We flew through Miami to get to Lima. Our layover in Miami was about 8 hours longer than it was supposed to be. We sat in the plane like everybody else for an hour, furrowing our brows to give extra punch to our occasional exclamations like "why the heck are we still sitting here?" Eventually we learned that the airline has a policy - they won't let anyone push the jetway away from the plane during a thunderstorm. Evidently they don't want to be blamed for the execution of a man dressed in yellow raingear. After a short nap, we took a taxi to the Plaza de Armas in downtown Lima and walked around. That's what you're looking at.

We paid our money and took at tour of the main cathedral in the Plaza. This was a painting that we particularly liked. The crazy licking dude is a saint that apparently was healing this other guy by licking the wound with his magic tongue. That's cool.

Now, it turns out this cathedral was the place to be buried. We all know the higher-up church guys get to be stuck under the floor under some plaque that people walk on for the next 1000 years. In Lima, evidently regular people got to be buried in the church too. Don't worry though, the rich people were still treated better. This is a box of heads from the well off. Whoever went and dug up all the bodies off those rich people (in the basement of the church) must have been an obsessive organizer. All the skulls in one box, the femurs in another, etc.

And here we find those not so well off. There was a large well, some 20+ feet in diameter and over 30 feet deep where the poor people were thrown in. This pile of bones is just the top of 30 feet of dead people. Nice that you could still be buried under the church though I guess.

Along the ocean, in a well-off area of Lima, there is a park of love. If you're wondering what goes on there, have a look at the statue over Kam's left shoulder.

There is a really nice view of the Lima coastline from the Park of Love. No one has ruined it with houses yet. This would be a nice place to live.

They must have new city planner. Unlike most of the Lima, there is a well planned, really nice mall at the top of the cliffs. There are a number of good restaurants that let you sit out precariously over a 500 foot drop with an unobstructed view of the ocean.

We flew from Lima to Cusco. The Andes were beautiful out the window.

Cusco is a nice city, very happy to receive tourists like us. See how nicely they light up the Plaza! Every city in Peru has a Plaza de Armas.

We jumped on a tour of the nearby Sacred Valley with a bunch of other tourists. They took us to a market where our friends let us take pictures with their alpacas and kids.

Just up the hill from Pisac, there are some great Inca ruins. The Incas built steps into the mountain sides as you see here. Sometimes they were used to grow food, sometimes for flowers, and sometimes they were just for looks apparently.

This is a better look at the ruins themselves. This was the site of some rocks used for astronomical prognostications (like how many days away is the rainy season). This is a large complex that they think only the priests actually got to visit and use.

More ruins, really amazing, but not photographed well. In case this one is not clear, this is a natural formation that looks like a man's head in the mountain near Ollantaytambo. We thought it was cool, so it makes the webpage.

In case you are convinced to order the Peruvian delicacy Cuy when you visit, here's a picture of what you'll be eating. They were really fattening up those guinea pigs for your next meal!

Next day, we hired a taxi and made our way to the ruins close to Cusco. For us gringos, this name of this place sounds like "Sexy woman". It's very close to Cusco (on a mountain top, of course) and probably one of the most impressive ruins around. The Incas moved rocks like the one you see here without the aid of machinery.

The Incas are famous for their mathematical abilities. They evidently were able to cut rocks like this one into many sides shapes and fit them together just so. What's most amazing is that a lot of these rocks weigh a number of tons. We found the simple fact that Incas didn't use mortar to be impressive. They simply shaved off the rocks so that they fit together so tightly they didn't need mortar. The structures they made last forever. Ok, another thing about this rock is that it looks like a panther's paw. The Incas sort of worshipped, or at least appreciated very much, the animals that surrounded them./

The Pope did a sermon from the location we're standing at in the 80's. That's cool.

This is a place you need good camera. We took the train to the nearby town of Agua Calientes (Hot Water), then the bus to the top of the mountain. Again, the Incas built on the top. Those people must have had legs of steel. If you ever go to Machu Picchu, we highly recommend you spend the night at Agua Calientes so that you can visit Machu Picchu at a leisurely pace.

Just to prove that we were actually there.

The ruins at Machu Picchu are largely intact because the Spanish didn't find it and destroy everything. These are some of the priest quarters (and probably the rich people), still standing after 100's of years. No mortar. Impressive.

Apparently more of the regular people lived here. Machu Picchu is somewhat far from other Inca cities, so they must have allowed the regular people to live up here too. Danged cool.

Okay, okay. I just couldn't take enough pictures. What a place!

An interesting feature. The rocks that are near the top of Machu Picchu look like just some regular rocks, but when you get down low and look out like in this view you can see it looks like they actually modeled the nearby mountains in the rocks that they placed here. Again, these were really big rocks they hauled over to this place.

Can't resist a few more

Kam pretties up the place.

Finally, we found a llama nearby so we could take that picture with Machu Picchu in the background that you absolutely can't leave without.

We skipped a lot of the story to get here. The synopsis is that we returned to Cusco, flew back to Lima, then took a 10-hour bus to Huaraz. The night of our arrival, we arranged to join a small group on the 10-day Huayhuash trek. The next morning, we got up early, crammed in a slightly too small mini-van with lots of locals, then started a 5 hour hike to a nearby Lake Churup.

Higher than Mount Whitney, in California on our first day! Getting to this spot was tough going.

This one is kind of an artsy shot of the moss growing in the water. Kam likes the picture, so its here.

Next morning, we met the bus from Huaraz at 5 AM. This was way too early. The bus took us a few hours to a small town where we were to catch a smaller bus. This is a picture of that smaller bus. I suppose the interesting thing about this shot is that these guys are lifting a live sheep up to the top of the bus! The poor sheep had his feet all tied together. They just tossed him on top with the bags and took him for an hour and a half ride on twisty-turny-dusty mountain roads. He/she was not happy. Kam is sitting inside the bus right where the sheep's head is smashed against the window.

This is the beautiful valley we walked through on our first day.

Kam models for us, showing off he mountain.

The donkey models for us. Pretty nice place to camp, eh?

This lake was very near our camp. It was the first lake on the Huayhuash trek. A short boggy hike brought us to it. Kam almost got stuck in the mud.

Here's Todd checking them out.

What looks better, Todd or the donkey's behind?

Same place, both of us.

The lakes get prettier.

The donkey driver always set up our tents before we arrived. Nice to show up with everything set up. Our excuse is that he got to ride the horse sometimes. That's why he got there so much faster than we did.

Same campsite, next morning. What a backdrop!

We camped the previous night near this lake. In the morning, we had to cross a raging river to get to the other side. A local, who lived out there in the middle of nowhere, helped us across the river.

Great reflections off the lake in the morning.

This was a tough day - really nice views of two beautiful lakes.

We walked over by the glacier that was in the previous photo.

These glaciers have apparently receded 100+ feet in the past 20 years. Someone should explain that to President Bush.

Finally we made it over the pass and just kept walking.

Even though we were over 14,000 feet up, we find there are some really strange growths that might normally be found in lower, lusher places.

Kam was ready to die. She collapsed on the ground. I covered her with a sleeping bag to make sure she didn't freeze solid right there.

We saw many kids on the trek that lived way up in the mountains. They would run a long way to wait on the trail for hours hoping that one of the 20 people that walked by each day would give them a piece of candy. They would yell "chocolate?" when we walked by. We gave this little guy a piece and took his picture.

The kid's parents owned a bunch of alpacas. The man was rounding them up when we walked by. We thought they were sheep for a while, but those swaying heads...

These guys were hanging out by the trail. They're cool.

There was quite a bit of thermal activity below the surface near the camp site this night. A mile-long walk brought us to a natural hot springs that the Incas used to use. Someone in modern times was nice enough to build a cement enclosure for it. The water was WAY to hot though. I guess it was over 110 degrees.

We were to reach 16,400 feet today. This was on our way up to the top. Really nice views.

Shortly before we reached the top, one of the donkeys broke down. As chance would have it, the donkey that was carrying our packs decided that he couldn't make it any farther. I carried my pack for the rest of the day (all down hill, thankfully). Another one of the donkeys died this night. The donkey driver said that the donkey was sick. There wasn't enough food up there and it snowed all night. These things are all pretty tough on a poor donkey.

We finally reached the god-forsaken town of Huayapa. We never should have stopped in this town. We did so only because the guide stopped us early the day before so that we couldn't make it as far as we had planned this day. The downside of Huayapa is that everyone's toilet sits right over the river that runs though town. We camped in a school yard at the bottom of town. This was not a good place to get water from the river for our soup. Too bad that's what happened.

This was a big day. We left Huayapa and climbed 1200 meters to make the next pass. Poor Kam wasn't very happy about any of this.

We climbed up 1200m, finally get to the top. Way up there, happy to finally be going down. There's this pig, looking kind of scary, honestly. He's tied up to the two sheep you see on the right side of the photo. Crazy.

This, the last camp of our trip, was maybe the prettiest camp. It was also the busiest camp on our trek. There were a lot of dogs and they weren't afraid to sneak up and take things. Course we didn't have any food left, but they didn't know that!

This lady was hiking in front of us. The little lamb in her backpack seemed to dig it.

This is the entire gang of us out there doing the trek: Kam and I, two French dudes (ok, only one is in the photo), and two Belgian dudes. This is the entire gang of us out there doing the trek: Kam and I, two French dudes (ok, only one is in the photo), and two Belgian dudes. Our cook (who we hated) and some random guy with a gun are also thrown in.

We waited for and finally caught this little bus at the outlet town. Unfortunately, it broke down on the way to catch our next bus and we missed it. We sat here for a little over an hour while the driver miraculously repaired the van!

OK, skip a lot, arrive back in Lima. We went to visit their flower market and couldn't resist a few pictures.

Those damned Spanish were pretty mean. The museum has all kinds of nice torture instruments, including this one here. Don't cross those bad boys, I guess. Especially the religious ones.