The sights in Peru were astounding. But the places I visited in Peru were over touristed. There was a distance between the tourist areas and the locals that was difficult to overcome. It is a little easier in Ecuador. We landed in the capital, Quito, on October 1st. The old city is beautiful and well maintained. We stayed in a hostel, the Secret Garden, which overlooks the whole historic area. And more than that it is a place to meet and talk with other travellers. We stayed quite a while in Quito; 10 days. We made a day trip to the famous markets in Otovallo. That was interesting, but not quite what I expected. We also spent a couple days in Banos, which is much more lush than the Quito area, has loads of waterfalls near town, and takes its name from the hotspring pools in town. Appearantly Incan emporers used to bath there for its medicinal purposes. It is the kind of place that I would stay longer if I had more time. From there we spent the night in a hostel near the mountain of Cotopaxi. That was really pretty. While we enjoyed main land Ecuador the echanted Galapagos islands were calling and we set off for a new adventure.

I have taken some crappy tours in my day. The sand dune tour of Mui Ne Vietnam comes to mind immediately, but there have been more. Many more. I am not saying this was the worst…but it was up there. Just for the record, if you go to Arequipa Peru and are short on time DO NOT take the full day trip to Colca Canyon. Just sleep in and enjoy the town for what it is. Have a coffee and do some souvenier shopping. From what I hear those with a more leisurely schedule have a much better time at the Colca Canyon. I can´t speak for them.

Arequipa itself is a pleasant town. It is full of old big white buildings that have a mediterranean look to them. On our first day in town we visited a 400 year old convent. The nuns there live in poverty and silence completely isolated from the rest of the world. There are currently 21 nuns, but our tour guide said that at its height there were over 400 nuns and female servants. That sounds simultaneously really boring and the perfect back story for a adult movie. Anyway, I digress.

 The full day Colca Canyon tour. It really was a full day tour. The whole idea was to see the Peruvian condors flying majestically above the breath taking canyon. They picked us up at 2:30 in the morning. The tour started before I usually get to bed on the weekends. Strike one. We spent the next hour and a half driving around town picking up other passengers. An hour and a half that I could have been sleeping. Strike two. Finally the bus got underway. I put in my earplugs, pulled my sleeping mask over my eyes and tried to make myself comfortable. Three hours later we were dropped off for our ´included´breakfast. Hard rolls with jam and tea. Yummy. Now I am just plain grumpy. Explictives are muttered under my breath. The other tour group sharing our bus finally returns from breakfast and we reboard to go see some condors. Yeah. Only, they had garlic rolls from breakfast. I know because when I ask the guy in the seat next to me I could smell it on his breath. He promptly sneezed into his hand. His upper lip glistened with snot. Fucking great. A snotty sneezy garlicy fucking German next to me. Let´s not get chatty pal. I pulled open the window and pressed my face towards the slot of fresh air. An hour passes. I remind myself that I am paying for this. I paid ten beers for this. Is it too late to trade back? We arrive at the condor viewing area. There are loads of tourists. No condors. An hour passes. Fewer tourists and still no condors. Our bus is due to pick us up at 10:30. At 5 minuts to 11 the condors come out. Look at that. Pretty. I could be well into my fourth beer watching this on youtube. I snap some photos. OK. I saw a huge beautiful bird of prey in the wild. Now for the four hour bus ride back to the hotel. Not so fast champ. There are still a bevy of uninteresting stops to make including hotsprings (which the Israelis on the bus boycott and inspires everyone else to follow suit. Politics aside, I love the Israelis) and an overpriced lunch. Again the Israelis boycott. I hate being dropped off in a tourist trap restaurant on a tour. I am paying for the tour. Don´t try to mooch extra from me. We watch to the town center and have a very good authentic Peruvian lunch for a third of the tourist buffet price. Enough with the cheesy tours. On to Ecuador.

Getting to Machu Picchu is not difficult, but it does require some advance planning.  Pop and I were rather more lackadaisical in our planning efforts. We wandered into the train station the day before we wanted to go and tried to buy tickets. Luckily for us there were internet terminals where you could make your purchases online and print your ticket out at the counter.  We were presented with a such a limited hodgepodge of choices that there is no way we could have figure this out in Spanish. We ultimately ended up booking a train for the next day leaving out of a town called Ollyantambo. That morning we got up fairly early and made our way by collectivo to Ollyantambo, spent a few hours sitting around and going to the market, then caught the train to the town Aguas Calientes. It is a collection of restaurants and hotels with some kinda dirty hotspring fed pools in easy walking distance. I found it lacking character. Like Disney land without rides. Perhaps my unfavorable image of the town has something to do with my time there. Since we took the train up, we needed to get up super early (4:40) in the morning to catch the first wave of buses to Machu Picchu to be there in time to watch the sunrise. Anticipating a long day ahead we went to bed around 8pm to try to get some sleep. Around 8:30 a club across the street turned the volume up to 11. It was then that I realized I forgot to pack my earplugs. The party picked up steam, culminating in a very enthusiastic drum session around 1:45am. It sounded fun. It sounded like the kind of experience you wouldn´t want to miss….unless you had to get up in three hours.

The alarm went off, we rolled out of bed and were in line for the buses by a quarter after 5. There were about 50 people ahead of us. Right on time the buses started rolling. We made it to the gates by a little before 6, got our Waynapicchu stamps and headed in to see the place. WOW. It was really amazing; worth rising before dawn even. It got even better when we got a guide. Appearantly Machu Picchu was used as some sort of agricultural and astronomical laboratory because both jungle crops and highland Andean crops would grow there because of it unique geographical location. Well, it looked great for being 600 years old. There is another peak nearby, Waynna Picchu, that priests used to climb for more astronomical studies. That was a hike to get up, but also well worth it. From there we could see the whole complx spread out below us. Really cool. We took the bus down a little early and had some Peruvian nachos: guacamole with some schredded cheese on top. Then it was on the train back to Ollyantambo. This experience was probably the highlight of Peru.