Wowee so it has been a little while, hasn´t it? We are officially at the end of our journey…. it is our last day in Lima and we get kicked out of our hotel in about 2 hours. We´re planning to kill time between then and the airport at the hair salon (SO much cheaper here, especially for Jenny to do colouring) and then at 11 pm tonight we will be on our plane back to Canada! But let´s rewind to everything we´ve done and seen since I last posted…. I´ll try to make it short because I´m a little hungry for breakfast. :)
After Machu Picchu, we headed back to Cuzco for our tour of the Sacred Valley. We saw some amazing Inca Ruins (a few that are a lot less visited than Machu Picchu, which was great), a really old beautiful church, and visited a small village where we learned how they make all of the wool and alpaca textiles with natural dyes and spinning! It was a really neat day.
The next morning we hopped straight on a 6 hour bus to Puno, which is along the shores of Lago Titicaca – the highest navigable lake in the world. It was huge. And beautiful. We went on a boat to visit one of the families that lives on the floating reed islands there… it was amazing, we felt like we were in the National Geographic. We then toured one of the real islands on the lake (not made of reeds!) and felt like we were in the Mediterranean. The lake is so big it looks like the Ocean to look out over it, but it is so blue that you feel like you´re in paridise. Took our breath away.
After Puno we headed to Arequipa – the white city. It was named that for all of the old buildings made out of volcanic rock (not really white, but very light grey). Arequipa was awesome. Near it is the Colca Canyon – the second deepest Canyon in the world (the other one is also in Peru I think….they have everything here!) and twice the size of the Grand Canyon. It was a two day tour to see it, but along the way we got to visit some mineral hot springs (so relaxing), see some traditional dancing, and meet a lot of really cool people in our tour group. Lots of cool pictures from that one, which I´ll post in a few days.
After the Colca Canyon tour, we headed to the coast…to the sun…to the beach. Mmmmmm. We are definitely browner now than when we started. It was so nice to just relax in Parakas. Off the coast of Parakas are the Ballestas islands, known here as ¨The Poor Man´s Gallapagos¨. Of course upon hearing that we couldn´t miss those, so we headed to them in a boat before our bus to Lima. That was possibly my favourite part of the trip. I felt like I was in an episode of Planet Earth (which i love). We saw tons of birds, penguins, boobies, divebombing in the water for fish and caring for their young. We were so close I my camera even got pooped on! There were also tons of Sea Lions…. it just felt like we were somewhere only Scientists get to see – very cool.
So now we are in Lima, and have done lots of shopping, gone to the movies…. and yesterday we went Paragliding! It was a little scary to do the run jump off the cliff part, and the part where the brake on the shoot broke right as we were two meters away from the mountain was a little scary too, but we both landed safe and sound, and had an awesome time. We had planned to do it at home some time, but jumping off a mountain in Peru was so much cooler. :)
Anyways, I know I´ve forgotten tons, but I´m sure I´ll remember to add some anecdotes as I post my pictures later this week. I´m so excited to get back to my Photoshop with them and have some fun!
Alright, stomach is grumbling so it is definitely time for breakfast. No pictures this time because I´ll be able to post my real pics soon.
Hasta manana!
-R
by Rebecca | Photographer
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