Almost immediately upon embarking for Peru we realized we would have to be a little careful about our ties to Chile and expressing any amount of excitement for one country when we were in the other. Apparently there is a little bitterness between the two countries ever since the War of the Pacific when Chile crushed Peru and took a bunch of land and ended up land-locking Bolivia. Peru in fact, as I was told, pretty much founded their nationalism on the basis of not liking Chile. Plus, the two countries are still fighing in some international court in Holland over national borders in the Pacific. And, Chile is a lot more wealthy so there is the added strife caused by Peruvians that come into Chile to work for less than minimum wage at all the hard labor jobs or as nanas (like Mexicans to the US). In Chile there is a sort of racism towards Peruvians because they are darker and speak differently (much clearer actually). So basically we just had to keep it on the DL (down low) that we were studying in Chile or if we were asked about it we just had to act like it wasn't that cool and then get really excited about everything Peruvian.
Fortunarly that was easy to do because there is a lot to get excited about it Peru. We flew into Lima Sunday morning without any real plans for anything and the intent to figure it out as we went. We decided to hop on a bus straight to Cusco, but not before getting some really really really good ceviche in Lima. Peru is pretty well known for ceviche and I understand why. We were craving more the rest of the trip but never really got the chance once we headed towards the mountains.
The ride from Cusco to Lima was a ridiculous 30 hours!! And the good bus company had
unfortuately filled all its seats so we were riding in the stuffier, hotter, less comfortable bus. They played movies (clearly bootleg copies) to keep us entertained and fed us three meals a day that were actually pretty decent but I'm not sure its something I would venture to do again.By Monday night we had finally reached Cusco and had all day Tuesday to wander around the city
. Cusco (left/below) was really cool but definitely very touristy as made apparent by the number of people that speak english and the number of locals that complemented us on speaking good spanish (aka actually speaking some amount of spanish unlike most of the
tourists and their phrase books). We made all our arrangements to leave for Aguas Calientes (the town below Machu Picchu) the next day and then spend the a
fternoon wandering. We went to more markets with alpaca products than any one person really probably ever needs to go to although I ended up with cool beanie and a pretty soft sweater. I also tried on a really cool llama hat which in retrospect I regret to some extent not buying (as see on the right). We ended up wandering into the mountains towards a giant statue of Jesus that we could see on the hillside (pretty c
ommon in Latin America - They have them in Brazil, Tegucigalpa, Santiago, etc... sometimes its a saint instead of Jesus though, or the Virign Mary, or in the case of Puno they have a giant statue of the first Inca king) and happened upon some ruins that we had seen in pictures although we didn't know where they were. A man at the ruins offered to take us horsebackriding to see some m
ore ruins, El Templo de la Luna, so we did that as well. The temple wasn't all that impressive but it was kind of fun to ride horses. It started to get dark though so the guide sort of dropped us off on the top of some random hill in the dark and we had to find our way back because the only taxi in sight was already waiting for someone. Thank god for the giant glowing Jesus on the hill (pun intended) because we had to use that as our marker to get home.The following day we left Cusco for Aguas Calientes. We ended up organizing the whole trip through a local tour agency in Cusco, even though we probably could have figured it by o
urselves, just to make sure it all worked out. We got to there by first taking a bus to Ollyantumbo and then taking Perurail (the train) from Ollyantumbo to Aguas Calientes. That day we spent exploring Aguas Calientes and resting up for Machu Picchu the following day because we knew it would be an early morning. While anyone can enter Machu Picchu at any time during the day (during business hours) you must be one of the first 400 people to enter the park if you want to climb Wynapicchu. Wynapicchu is the peak of the mountain that is behind the ruins in most of the famous pictures of Machu Picchu. It rises an extra couple thousand feet above Machu Picchu with amazing views, plus its free, so of course we wanted to do it. That required waking up by 3:30AM however, in time to start hiking up the mountain by 4AM in order to arrive on the mountain by 5/5:30AM before the first buses. Thus we kept our day in Aguas Calientes pretty low key and went to bed pretty early. We did head to t
he hot springs for a few hours although they were not at all what we expected. They had been completely developed such that they were basically concrete swimming pools with the hot spring water being pumped into them and some of them had sand on the bottom. It wasnt like sitting on boulders or anything alhtough it was relaxing. We also made some time to get some good food. Poor Matt the whole trip travelling with three girls was consistently hungry. Fortunately there were a fair amount of places to get large cheap quantities of food. Even in Aguas Calientes where it was probably the most touristy and the most expensive you could still get a 3-4 course meal for 10-15 soles (about 3-5$USD).As mentioned earlier, the following morning we woke up at 3:30 AM in order to make our dash for Machu Picchu. We scrambled around a little bit in the morning trying to figure out where to leave our bags and such but made up fo
r lost time on our hike. It was pretty incredible. Hundreds of people were pooring up the trail (and by trail I basically mean stone step swi
tchbacks all the way up the mountain) in the pitch black. Those that stopped to catch a breath were left behind and if you went to slow you were going to be passed up by someone sprightlier. It was a tough hike on such a steep slope, especially with the altitude, but we had it up in a little over an hour (we were told it would take 1.5-2 hours). The atmosphere on top of the hill at the gates of Machu Picchu was awesome. A couple hundred people crowded around in the dark, all excited to be a
mong the first on top but 
nervous to wait for the Machu Picchu gates to open at 6 when they could dash across the park to the entrance to Wynapicchu where they needed to get the actual ticket for entering Wynapicchu later that day. Some crazy Brazilians were singing songs about "marijuana para fumar" (marijana to smoke) and "chilenas para besar" (Chilean girls to kiss) so some crazy Chileans were answering back at them with Chilean soccer cheers and waving flags. I realized how un-proud I am to be American. I am pretty thankful and lucky to have been born in America and to live in America but there is no national pride cheer i would ever want to do in that situation. For that reason I was a little jealous of the Brazilians and Chileans. I would have joined the Chilean cheers except for reasons as mentioned earlier about how one has to be careful as a Chilean in Peru. Plus I was standing closer to the Brazilians. Anyway though, at about 6AM t
he park gates opened and we dashed across the ruins to the other side to get our time slots to enter Wynapicchu later that 
day. I was number 265 of 400 to be allowed to enter Wynapicchu that day. We didn't sign up to go in until between 10AM and 11AM though so we had a while to wander around in the morning. Machu Picchu is incredible. It totally exceeded all expectations. I thought it would be cool to see and all but I kind of expected the ruins to not be all that impressive or to get bored after a few hours of being there. Neither was tru though. It was so amazing. It just doesn't seem possible that people were able to construct 
something so impressive and so sturdy, so long ago. The Incas were apparently spread out at various locations throughout the Andes (Cusco being the capital, and all connected via the Inca Trails) but Machu Picchu was the sort of educational site. It was there that the nobles were educated. There are a bunch of houses though, and temples, and sun dials, and running water. It si amazing how smooth the stone bricks are and how symmetrical everything is. We took a guided tour (in Spanish) for a few hours and our guide made a point of showing us how you could peer down an alley and there was not a brick our house out of line. Everything is in a sort of slight-triangular shape as well, without the point on top, which I thought was cool because they meant to imitate the shape of the mountains in order to build the strongest construction. Taking the tour in Spanish was really interesting because I don't think they say all the same things usually in an English tour. For example, he told us all about how the Americans came in and took all the cool artifacts and claimed they discovered it when there had been some Peruvian farmer-types living there for a few years already. I'm sure they mention it in an English tour but I doubt the story is told with as much disdain. He also made fun of us for being white because our skin was not "full of life" but when I laughed and started blushing he called me out like "oh! There's the life!" which was funny. The tour was good all around and ended just in time for us to get into Wynapicchu.The trail up to Wynapicchu was basically another staircase although the steps were much more difficult to climb plus it had started to rain so it was a little muddy. It didn't take too long to climb though and the view from the top was really cool. It felt like we were pretty much on top of the world.
Definitely worth waking up so early... I recommend it to anyone who goes to Machu Picchu.
On our way down from Wynapicchu as well we discovered a sort of side trail to some cave that led us through the jungle a ways and was kind of cool although we were all pretty tired by that point in the day after two big hikes. We wandered some more before the park closed and caught on of the last buses back to Aguas Calientes in time to catch our train back to Cusco that night.
Friday we had another free day in Cusco although we were pretty tired still and the weather wasn't very nice so we weren't very gung-ho about doing anything really. We hit up a few more alpaca ferias (markets) and wandered a bit outside of the touristy parts of Cusco. That night we jumped on a night bus to Puno which is a small city on the Peru side of Lake Titikaka. We all collectively agreed that it was the worst bus ever pretty much. It was incredibly hot and uncomfortable and all we wanted to do was sleep but people were going up and down the isles at 3AM selling bread and collectibles. I myself felt pretty sick when I got off was dying to get to a bed in the hostel by the time we got there although unfortuately, checking in at 4:30AM, all the beds were still full from the night before. Instead however, we walked down to the docks to watch the sunrise over the lake which was gorgeous. Matt took a bagillion pictures of it on my camera of which I will spare the readers of this but I'll put in a few good ones.
Finally by about 7:30AM back at the hostel some beds opened up and we all got to sleep off the illness acquired from the awful bus ride. Most of the morning we spent resting and not doing too much. The food and water plus the altitude and th
e cold (temperature) and the cold (flu) and the 
not sleeping was getting to me a little and I didn't feel too well
for the rest of the trip. By the afternoon I was pretty alright though and we decided to take a tour that the hostel offered to a place called Sillustani, about 45 minutes outside of Puno. The area is basically the site of an old Aymara cemetary that the Incas found and made an Inca cemetary as well although it was only for the nobles. The bodies were mummified in these big rock tomb things. There was a bunch of symbolism that our guide explained about the duality of the male and the female and the inner and the outer and shapes and stuff although it was all a little wish washy to me. The actual area where the cemetary was built was gorgeous though. It was just a really unique landscape with odd colors and a lake. And llamas. Plus on the way back the tour van stopped at the home of a woman that lived in a traditional little hut right outside of the town next to the highway and she showed us 
here home and how she grew a whole bunch of grains and made cheese and stuff. And she prepared for us all a little snack of a small cooked potato with this green paste stuff and this salty cheese which was actually quite tasty. And we drank it with this herb tea stuff thats good fo
r the stomach. We passed so many stone huts like hers on the various bus rides we took so it was really cool to actually go in one and see to some extent how someone is able to live there. I still haven't figured out how the majority of rural households in Peru get water though. There are quite a few houses throughout the desert that definitely don't have electricity or running water and yet don't seem like they are anywhere near a water source or close enough to ground water to dig a well. I don't know... I'm stumped... We got back from Sillustani though and grabbed some MachuPizza downtown before heading to bed early once again.Sunday was the big day to go see the islands for which Lake Titikaka is most famous, the floating reed islands, Los Uros. I mean, I guess its generally famous for its comical name as well (which I found out means Stone (colored) Puma basically), and for being the highest navigable lake in the
world, and for La Isla del Sol and La Isla de la Luna on the Bolivian side (the lake is split between Peru and Bolivia) but the reed islands are pretty cool. It's weird going to out to them because it only takes about 25 minutes by slow boat to get to them and yet you can't even tell they are there pretty much until you arrive. The patches of reeds growing around them hide them completely, even though the reeds only grow about 3 feet out of the water. They are legitimately floating islands though, made entirely of reeds and reed roots, although nowadays they are anchored to the lake floor and they use some nylon rope to tie things together occasionally. Ther
e are about 48+ islands in Los Uros of which we visited two. All the different tour companies go to different islands although I think most go to the same second island that we went to. The first island was where we had a tour and actually talked to the people whereas the second island was basically set up with a gift shop and a restaurant. It was a little weird going to the island and going through the tourist experience with an indigenous tribe after h
aving worked with an indigenous tribe that worked in tourism in Panama from a completely different perspective but it was a good experience. They demostrated how they made the reed floor in blocks and tied the blocks together, and how they fish and make crafts. There are two elementary schools on the islands which I thought was cool but after that kids ha
ve to paddle into Puno for higher education. It was interesting too because many of the people in the islands only speak Aymara, they don't even speak spanish. Only the children who learn spanish in school and the men that are forced to go to Puno or Lima for work usually can speak spanish. My favorite part was probably when they split the big group into groups of 3 to each visit one family and the wife of the household we visited dressed us up in traditional clothing. I know they probably mainly wear it for tourists and all have a pair of 
modern clothes tucked away for when they need to go to the city and such but I still enjoyed it. I figure there is two ways of looking at the whole thing. The first is probably the more common with people who care or pretend to care and that is that the whole thing is a shame that the people have to "sell out" on their culture and they play everything up for the rich fat tourist its all sad that the tourise supports such a sham because its the to
urist's fault that they have to make everything so toursity. While I don't think the first way is completely un-right, I tend more towards the second way which is that because these people have tourism as an economic option, they have both a way to make money that they didn't have beforehand and that is hard to come across in such a poor country, plus they have a way to continue living how their ancestors have been living for centuries and preserve that culture to some extent, even if a lot of it is for tourist show. Because I mean, let's face it. They wouldn't be living on their little reed islands if it wasn't a tourist attraction, it would just be way to hard and expensive and not worth it to have access to food and doctors and gas for boats. Overall I thought it was a cool experience. And they sang to us as we left and rowed us on their little reed boat to the next island.We got back to Puno in the early afternoon and only had a few hours to kill before we were set to catch the bus to Lima, via Arequipa at 3PM. The plan was as such: bus Puno to Arequipa leaving at 3pm and arriving at 9PM, bus Arequpia to Lima leaving at 10pm and arriving at 3ish PM, spend a day and a night in Lima, then head back to Santiago the followin
g on our 12:30 PM flight. What actually happened however was this: on the should-have-been-6-hour bus to Arequipa, it started snowing. A lot. All traffic stopped because of two trucks upahead that had some issue. Our bus got stuck on ice overnight. And we were forced to wait until the sun came up before people on the bus could see in the light and help navigate our bus off the ice patches in the snow storm in order to make it over the mountain and down the other side to Arequipa. Basically, our 6 hour ride became a 19 hour ride, and needless to say we missed out connecting bus to Lima. It all ended up working out though in the end, as it always does, thankfully and we were able to switch our missed reservation to get new tickets out of Arequipa Monday night at about 5 PM. We ended up with a day in Arequipa instead of a day in Lima which was alright. All along people told us how much they liked Arequipa so we were intially sad to be missing it although after spending a day there I didn'
t think it was particularly impressive. It looked like Santiago in a lot of ways since it was just sort of a city with big mountains behind it, although of course not as big a city as Santiago. Apparently there is some famous valley or something there though that we didn't have time to go see which is a pretty big attraction there and may have been why people thought Arequipa was so impressive. All we really did there was walk around the Plaza de Armas (every Latin American city, to my experience, in addition to a large religous statue on a hill that is lit up at night, also has a Plaza de Armas. I again don't know why). And then from Arequipa we got back on our last bus to Lima and made it back just in time to go straight to the airport and fly home.All in all a good trip. My advice for any future Peru-goers
a) just because a hostel says it has hot water does not mean it does - we had at least 3 in a row that didn't
b) try the ceviche
c) don't affiliate yourself with Chile
d) go to Machu Picchu (duh)
e) try to avoid Ormeño buses, pay the extra $5 to upgrade to Cruz del Sur, it is WORTH IT
