Life after the storm

So I guess this is my first full update in quite a while. So I guess I will start where I left off… After a somewhat hectic time in Lima, Peru filling out paperwork and trying to figure out what I was going to do next with my life I decided to spend even more time in Peru and go on vacation for a bit with my girlfriend. Lima, Peru is not a very nice city… it is full of pollution and it is never sunny so we took the next flight out of there… literally. An interesting side note, the population of Lima is around nine million people and the entire population of Bolivia is around eight million people. Our first stop was Cusco which is the major stop for Machu Pichu on of the new Seven Wonders of the World. M.P. is in a very remote part of Peru way in the mountains but of course with the wonders on tourism they have made it easily assessable. In my opinion, maybe it is a little too easy. There is a little town at the base of the mountain where once you get off the train (there is a four day hike from Cusco to here if you feel up to it) you can walk a little way and board a bus that ships you to the top of the mountain (you can also hike up that too). Since we were short on time we had to opt for the faster methods… reluctantly. When I boarded the bus my first thought was, is this bus going to Machu Pichu? You would think they had just finished up an AARP conference and were all headed to Super Senior Day at the local diner. All jokes aside we were outside our “demographic” as my friend Garrett likes to say. So we finally made it up to the top and literally had to empty our wallets to get in. After paying for an overpriced train and bus ride we did not think they charged to get in… we were wrong. On the bright side, now that each of us were forty dollars lighter it was a lot easier to hike around the ruins. So we spent the day there and since we had no money to pay for water or the bus ride back down the mountain we had to hike down the mountain. We spent some time relaxing at the river below and lost track of time and ended up sprinting to catch our train but oh well we came, we saw, we conquered. Our next stop was Lake Titicaca and the floating islands of Uros. The islands are made out of reeds and they just add more and more while the others in the water are decomposing, it is a really interesting way of living. We tried to avoid the gringo tourists and decided to travel like the local tourists… they use boats that are not a posh and sometimes downright crappy. We happened to get on of the crappy ones. They steer with a rudder stick and there is not a variable spend transmission, there are two modes… go and stop so they have to get a safe distance from the dock and other boats before starting up the motor. So after we get out in open water the captain attempts to start the motor… after ten minutes of him tinkering with the motor and siphoning the fuel we are on our way. It was definitely not running very smoothly and back firing constantly but I was happy that we were on our way, well halfway through our trip the engine overheats and we are stranded in the middle of this lake for about 45 minutes as all the tourist boats passed by… I just smiled and waved. We finally made it out to the islands and toured several of the islands and then we had a trout lunch at one of the islands that had a restaurant. Sadly the trip back was uneventful. A couple bus rides and flights later I was back in the homeland enjoying micro- brews, good pizza, clam chowder and even scallops.

I UPDATED MY ADDRESS TOO LOOK UNDER THE B IN NICARAGUA TAB