E.J. here

Not much needs be said about Machu Picchu but I'll probably find a way to do it anyway. 

But the pictures should speak for themselves.

Inca site on our first day - we didn't realize how many other sites we'd say along the way in four days

Seeing Machu Picchu has been at the top of my 'bucket list' (ugh) for about 15 years. I KNEW that it had to happen, if we were going to make this trip take place. This spring we learned that you have to make reservations to do the 4 day hike to Machu Picchu 6 months out, so making that reservation and putting $600 down, back in March is the thing that finally set our trip into motion. We knew we had to be in Cuzco by about 6 September, which gave form to our otherwise completely improvised itinerary.

Our hiking crew (15 of us tourists, plus the Peru Treks porters)

Day one of the hike we piled onto a small bus with 14 other people that were due to become our trek buddies. We started off with an awkward breakfast in Ollantaytambo, making small-talk with these randos that we were soon to be sharing the trail with. I'm funny about forced socialization, invariably resisting it, at least internally. Maggie was much more excited to make some new friends from the offset (I think).

We rented hiking poles (highly recommended) and I bought an ounce of coca leaves and illepta before we set off. It is legal to chew coca in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia and it helps with energy levels and altitude sickness (usually headaches for me). It is NOT like doing cocaine. Its a mild stimulant, about as strong as a cup of tea, in my experience.

Porters taking a minute on the many, many enormous stone stairs

Day one is what our tour guide called "Inca flat", which is up and down, up and down, without any major elevation gain or loss. As we set off, the group automatically thinned out, with some folks taking up the rear and others leading the way. The guide would describe the next hour or two of trail (up a steep slope, leveling out, pass to the right of a lake, etc) and set a meeting place. 

Making it to to top of the pass on day 2 

Pretty organically, you end up hiking with one or two other groups, pairs, who end up being your trail buddies. Talking about what things are like in your respective countries, food you miss, places you recommend checking out, travel wisdom, etc. 

Over the course of the 4 day hike to Machu Picchu, you end up sharing the trail with about everyone in your group and its pretty easy to naturally gravitate to certain physically or conversationally compatible people. 

Our fantastic guides - Saul and Pepe - Saul has done the Inca Trail 200+ times and Pepe 99 times!

The thing that surprised us is how quickly you come to feel close to these strangers, due to the shared experience of the physical demands of the days hike. It was not impressed upon me how grueling these 4 days were going to be. I'm not in the best shape. I've never run a marathon. But I'm not in the worst shape, either. I'm 36 years old and I don't have any joints that are degenerating any faster than they should on the average 36 year old. And I was damn thankful for that. The Inca Trail will put your knees to the test. Day 2 I saw some people with old injuries that looked like they were suffering.

All told, Maggie and I did pretty great. We never came into camp first, but we were usually in the first half of the group. In order to facilitate 16 novices hiking the 4 day trek, the group we went with (http://www.perutreks.com/) had 21 porters lugging in our stuff. Local Peruvian men, who spoke mostly quechua, and carried 20 kgs of supplies, often wearing light sneakers, and hiked in ahead of the group to set up lunch or the evenings camp. You're hiking up this steep slope, with a small backpack, holding a sweater, sunblock and a bottle of water, barely putting one foot in front of the other, breathing heavily and sweating, and someone behind you calls "Porters on the left!" You sidle to the right side of the trail, trudging along, and 4 Quechua guys, all barely 5 feet tall, lope past you, carrying gigantic bags, joking to each other as they go. Humbling. They get into camp an hour before you, set up everyone's tents, bring water from the creek, start it to boiling and get working on dinner. All this being said, there are a lot of allegations that different companies mistreat their porters, not providing enough food or water, overloading them beyond the legally allowable 20 kgs and not providing adequate sleeping supplies. Peru Treks came pretty highly reviewed and had a decent record, from what we saw, and our guides continually expressed upon us the respect and appreciation we owed the porters. So with there being a lot of dubious companies out there, we both recommend Peru Treks. 

More ruins along the way 

The only other thing I'll say is that with this trip having been build up for as long as it was (especially in my head), we were both worried that arriving on day 4 was going to be anticlimactic.  In short, it wasn't. Macchu Picchu is more incredible than the pictures. It was worth it. Its duly one of the great wonders of the man-made world. 

The fourth and final day was also Maggie's birthday. Waking up at 3:30 AM to hike the jungle path to the site made for a seriously memorable one. After touring the site, we made our way down the mountain to Aguas Calientes and ended up having to wait until the late afternoon for bus and train rides back to Cuzco. It ended up being the perfect opportunity to enjoy our new friends and celebrate the birthday. Pisco sours all around.....salud!

Incredible terraces on the end of day 3 - this is where the food for Machu Picchu was farmed

We made it!

Llamas are all over the place on these sites to help keep the grass mowed

Lima->Ayacucho->Andahauylas

E.J. here.
Well, we left Huaraz and the Cordillera Blanca over a week ago now and took a day bus to Lima.
Back down out of the mountains for a few days in the capital.
Before we left on our wanderings, a friend told us once that when going to Ecuador, that Quito was a "necessary evil" in that there wasn't much great about the city, but you had to pass through to get everywhere else in the country. I actually liked Quito more than we had been led to expect, but I found that label somewhat true for Lima.
We HAD to pass through Lima. Theoretically, you could skirt the capital, but it would add significntly to bus times. So down out of the mountains we came. Lima is gigantic. Google tells me 8.4 million people. All the gringos stay in the neighborhood of Miraflores, so we did too, for two nights. It was kind of horrifying. Now its hard to communicate this without sounding insufferable to somebody, but oh well. I'm insufferable...

I have found that I enjoy getting off the beaten path. I'm never going to learn any Spanish if everyone insists on speaking English all the time. Miraflores had all the best of the worst of American food chains, so the gringos don't get too homesick. Pasty, awkward German, British, Australian and American tourists gawking on every sidewalk, preventing normal human beings from walking down a normal city sidewalk at a normal city pace. Shit was way overpriced. Ok. Phew. Got that out of my system. I didn't love Lima.

Now all that being said, there IS quite a food scene and I had some incredible ceviche. There is great food to be had in Lima. And we went to an amazing museum (Museo Nacional de Arqueologia, Antropologia e Historia), where they had a fascinating display of pre-colombian artifacts, remains and art.

Ceviche and "chicharron de pescado" (fried fish)

They had several skulls, displaying the ritualistic (and intentional) deformations known in pre-Inca times. They would bind ropes around the not-fully formed skulls of children, so they would grown into different shapes to indicate status/ aristocracy (correct me if I'm wrong in the comments).

They also had some fascinating trepannation skulls. Back in the day, (900 years before antibiotics, mind you), they used to remove a section of skull to relieve pressure (and let out the spirits) and then would cover the exposed section up with a section of gold plating. Incredibly, some of these skulls show the rounded edges that come from healing and regrowth over time. So some people made it. As my buddy Brett said, "Holes in the skull are not to be trifled with...the survival rate probably wasn't 100%".

At any rate, we decided to move on toward Cuzco after two days and I made a case to get off the "gringo trail". Southern Peru is much more touristed than the north and there is a "trail" where the same people go the same places in the same order. A lot of that is unavoidable. Everybody goes to Cuzco. But I had a hunch that we could take an alternate route through instead of around the Andes and see some stuff most of our fellow gringoes skip.
We decided to take a 10 hour bus into the mountains to the city of Ayacucho, which we both loved. The great thing about our unplanned, slow travel is when you get to love a lace, its easy and unproblemmatic to stay a couple of extra days. We were originally going to crash a couple of nights, but we just didn't want to leave. Ayacucho was the city where the Shining Path got its original foothold in the 70s and 80s (More info here).  Side note: I just read Mario Vargas Llosas' Death in the Andes and highly recommend it, if you're interested. It's historical fiction, not history, but I think it illuminates what was going on here in the 80s and what it was like for the poeple living here, in the shadow of the Sendero Luminoso.
All that being said, kind of like "the troubles" in Ireland/ Northern Ireland, its not history locals really want to dredge up. But there was a Museo de Memoria, which documents some of the suffering the people of Peru experienced during that time, including a really haunting series of dozens and dozens of portaits of mothers who lost a child in the fighting/ terror.

Ok all that being said, Ayacucho is mostly (to the visitor) a truly living Peruvian city. There isn't much of any tourist industry. Just life going on as it does, whether I'm there or not. What we've found is that in the touristy areas (of any country), you're a commodity. How can I make some cash off this fat-pocketed tourist. A bit cynical, I know, but lets be real. But the thing is, in Ayacucho, in Leymebamba, in Chiclayo, we didn't feel like commodities but curiosities, instead. Off the gringo trail, in those cities, people just think I'm funny looking (I am) and that its quaint how I'm trying to use my meager Spanish. Which I find infinitely more enjoyable. And we learn more Spanish. And the food's more authentic. Anyways.

Pedestrian streets off the Plaza de Armas in Ayacucho

Ayacuchan woman in traditional dress.  

Ayacucho was great. Highly recommended, if you're ever in that part of the world. Each city in Peru has a Plaza de Armas, a park in the center of the city, where, as our guidebook puts it, "each evening, the locals sit and stroll and discuss the events of the day". Every city has one. But not all Plaza de Armas' are made equal.

Bolivar statue in the Ayacucho Plaza de Armas

Ayacucho's was gorgeous. And we had some amazing meals. If you ever go to Ayacucho, do yourself a favor and go to El Niño for dinner. A couple of blocks north of the Plaza.

Sometimes when travelling, you have to treat yourself to grilled meat goodness: El Niño, Ayacucho

And sometimes you have to treat yourself to warm, mediocre beer in a dive bar that smells of cat piss (also Ayacucho)

(A brief note on the word gringo:
Living in Texas, when a person of Mexican heritage calls you a gringo, especially a Texan in Mexico, etc, there is a definite derogatory implication. We have found that such is not the case in South America. Its more a statement of fact. You're not so much being called a cracker as a pale foreigner. It doesn't have as much venom and Peruvians are not shy to call me a gringo to my face because no malice is intended. I.e. we dropped of laundry in Ayacucho and the elderly gentleman, instead of asking my name, wrote "el gringo" on my receipt and with a smile, told me in Spanish, "Come back at 6:30. I'll remember you")

We evetually moved on. The bus ride to Cuzco was supposed to be 17 hours, so we decided to break it up by stopping in the village of Andahuaylas. I'll keep this short: highlights: the room cost us $12. The second cheapest place we've stayed so far. Lowlights: there is no running water in the village between the hours of 10am and 3pm. And we slept in. There was a dope statue, though:

In this region, villages have a history (not sure if it was Andahuaylas or the next village over) of lashing a live condor to the back of a bull and having them fight. To symbolize the struggles of the indigenous people under the regime of the Spaniards. Brutal.
We moved on the next day and took a bus to Cuzco, where we are now. Next up: the Inca Trail and Macchu Picchu!

Huaraz and the Cordillera Blanca

We ended up spending about 5 days in Huaraz; we completed 3 day hikes, spent time hanging out and cooking at our hostel (Hostel Akilpo, where we met lots of great people and got lots of good advice on our hikes), and sampled some seriously delicious street food (chochos, roasted suckling pig and papas rellenas, yum!) and craft beer. In short: we loved Huaraz.

Our first day we did a rather lackluster  acclimatization hike to Lake Wilkacocha. Huaraz is at an elevation of 10,000 feet/ 3,052 meters, in the valley of surrounding mountains, so its necessary to go on a moderate hike and see that you're ready/ that you're not going to get altitude sickness, before you go one one of the big ones.  On the second day we set out on our own via public transportation to hike to Laguna Churup, and on our fourth day we joined a larger group to complete the trek to Laguna 69, which was 3 hours from Huaraz. The color of the glacier-fed lakes, the snow-capped peaks, and the unbelievable 360 degree landscapes had us in awe. Well worth the altitude induced shortness of breath and the never-ending switch backs.

On our return from Laguna Churup, we had one of my favorite cross cultural travel moments this far. We shared a combi/collectivo with a group of 5 French hikers, who spoke varying levels of English and Spanish (in addition to French, of course). Our Peruvian driver spoke very little English but was eager to talk music with us when one of the French guys joined him on the bench seat up front and plugged in his iPod - somehow this guy had a combination of music with him that included Edith Piaf, Jurassic 5, Manu Chao, The Soggy Bottom Boys, The Bee-Gees, Jimmy Cliff and Mozart. As we rambled down the mountain sampling and discussing all of the above we were joined by a few locals speaking Quechua who started teaching us some common phrases. In much of our travel, we kind of worry that we're always these gringo travelers, unable to speak enough Spanish to a Peruvian local. It was great to feel a truly international experience. French people trying to speak Spanish, an Indigenous villager playfully teaching us Quechua and a Peruvian bus driver telling us about Huayno music https://youtu.be/YaVZIyZ1xgo
We got off the combi bus elated with all of the scenery, laughter and shared novel experience. Its cheeseball, but this is what we're travelling for.

I'm just going to let the photos do the rest of the talking

On the ascent to Laguna Churup

There were only 2 other people at the Laguna at the same time as us! 

View from the start of the hike to Churup

Rest stop! We loved Sierra Andina beer

Lake Llanganuco, a pit stop on the way to hike to Laguna 69

Such lucky cows, living with these views

The water really is that color. REALLY

Can you spot the long tailed chinchilla in this photo?

After five days, we decided it was time to move on, in order to stick to our timeline of arriving in Cuzco on the 5th or 6th. We took a day bus to Lima to spend a few days before heading east, back into the mountains.