¡Hola! It´s Megan blogging from Cusco, Peru. We are finally here and it´s going to be an awesome final stretch! I cannot believe how quickly this trip has gone by. So happy to hear everybody enjoyed the photos from Ecuador! It was not easy uploading them but definitely worth the effort 🙂
Entonces, last week was free travel and we spent it in Huaraz and Trujillo/Huanchao. The terrain here is so different from Ecuador–desert mountains and valleys and then in the distance snowy peaks and perhaps a volcano, I´m not really sure. On our bus ride from Lima to Huaraz the landscape was so crazy! Kelsey said it looked like the Middle East if we knew what that looked like. On one side there were huge dune mountains and on the other, sandy cliffs and ocean. When I think of ocean I definitely don´t think of infertile desert lands but here that is what you get. And then we saw these shanty square huts all clustered in rows and columns. They were probably the size of outhouses. I am interested to see more of Peru because I expect it is very different from Ecuador.
Some specific things we did during free travel:
- took hot showers (!!!!!!)
- rode buses for a grand total of 27ish hours
- met many awesome and well-traveled travelers at our hostel in Huaraz
- some hiked to Lake 69, some rode horses to see an incredible view of the snowy mountains and some mountain biked, all in Huaraz
- saved mad soles on our lodging so we could stay in a fancy hotel in Lima
- saved more mad soles on activities so we could spend some activity money on a fancy dinner in Lima
- ate more Oreos…
- realized Peruvian Spanish is quite different from Ecuadorian Spanish
- had some sweet tours of Huaraz from Helen´s novio, Josh, who had been living and working there for at least a month
- watched the sunset in Huanchaco
- visited the 700 year old ruins of Chan Chan outside Trujillo
- experienced many random parades in Trujillo
- and more!!!
Spanish school starts today and our homestays are so different from our previous ones in Pucara and Agualongo. It is nice to have hot water, though…
As always, I love and miss everybody and hope to talk to you soon 🙂
Happy Halloween and Feliz Festival de Pan,
Megan
PS – Photo captions to come!