Peru Day One

This trip posted below was one of the highlights of our summer. It's probably one of the highlights of my life. Traveling the world and seeing how others live fascinates me. My one hope in this life is to travel the world with my children and help them open their eyes' to the world around them.

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It was the last flight of our journey and my eyes were so tired, but I couldn't shut them for fear of missing out. Just outside the window to my left were the most beautiful and majestic mountains towering over the ground below them. Maybe it's the fact that for the past eight months my eyes had been longing to see something a little less flat like they were accustomed to in the state of Nebraska, but those mountains were for lack of a better saying, "a sight for sore eyes". I remember silently thinking to myself, "how can there not be a God?" over and over in my mind as I looked out the window at the beautiful mountains just below me. I found myself silently asking myself that same question time and time again during our trip to Peru.

When we finally returned from our nine day trip and everyone asked us how it was, we all replied with the same answer: hard. Everyone seemed to be caught a little off guard and somewhat confused by our answer. Honestly, I'm not sure any of us had really anticipated how physically demanding this trip was going to be. We went to Peru to see Machu Picchu. But, we went to Peru to hike to Machu Picchu. We hiked close to 40 miles in three days before finally arriving at our end destination. And honestly, those three days of strenuous hiking made visiting Machu Picchu a little sweeter for all of us.

Day one quickly opened my eyes to how the rest of our trip would play out. After landing in Cusco and grabbing our bags, our travel agent picked us up at the airport and took us straight to our hostel where we dropped our bags and walked down the street to a little LDS church in the middle of a busy town. We spent the next hour there before heading back to the hostel. We grabbed some authentic street pork tamales on the way back and literally only had time to eat and maybe take a potty break before we headed back out again. We then walked to a local market to do some souvenir shopping. A poncho and hat for my baby back home were the only things on my list.

This photo below was taken just outside of the church. The guy on the right end was our travel agent.

These first few photos were taken in the Plaza de Armas, the center of Cusco, on our way to the Mercado where we did our shopping.

After spending some time there, we walked back to our hostel where we met up with Maria Christina who took us on a walking tour of the city of Cusco. We visited a couple local churches and then took a "bus" as they called it, but really it was more of a van, to some local Incan ruins called Sacsayhuaman (pronounced "sexy woman", or at least that's how we kept jokingly referring to it as).

Maria Christina is the cute girl in the middle. This photo was taken in the Plaza de Armas.

I totally chickened out after seeing how much speed Scott and my brother gained going down these natural slides at Sacsayhuaman. 

(Guinea Pig. This is a popular dish down in Peru. I didn't have any. I couldn't even look at it, so I made my family move it to the other side of the table while I ate my stuffed pepper that night for dinner.)

After returning back to our hostel, we went to dinner and then called it a night seeing as we had to be up and out the door by 4:30AM the next morning. That next morning was the beginning of our trek, the real reason we went to Peru.

Fourth of July

I have a few posts from this summer that I want to record here, so bear with me as some of these future posts will seem a little outdated.

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We don't have many traditions as a little family of three. This one is going on two years strong and I hope it continues as long as we are living in this state. Every year we watch the fireworks with my family in my mom's neighborhood on July 3rd, leaving us alone on the 4th as everyone seems to already have plans for the day. Last year we decided to start our own tradition and celebrate the 4th in my favorite little town. This year we drove up to Park City again to ring in the 4th, just the three of us. We went out to eat, drove to the same barn we took photos at last year and snapped a few again this year, and then headed to the golf course to watch the fireworks. Reese is the most social (then 18 month old) girl I have ever known. From the moment we staked out our spot on the green to the moment we left (early because we couldn't keep up with her) she was off introducing herself to everyone around us and playing with every child she could find. And everyone always seems to fall in love with her. Honestly, I can't say I'm terribly surprised.

And one from last year to show just how much she has grown in that short time: