Feliz Navidad!

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas from Peru!!

The Golden Arches

You know I am starting to get homesick when.... I decide to eat lunch at McDonalds instead of a Peruvian restaurant. I ate there not once this past week, but twice. Yikes!! Cusco doesn´t have many chain restaurants, but McDonalds opened the first weekend I was here in September. There are plenty of good things to eat here, so I´ve had no reason to go there, until now. I just couldn´t resist a golden arches cheeseburger and fries!! It tasted like home.

I have started missing southern food too. Here is the beginning of a list of things I am looking forward to eating when I return to the States: my mom´s lasagna, Cracker Barrel biscuits and hash browns, Lawyer´s Barbeque, corned beef hash and Thai food. Oh and I almost forgot, pizza with real cheese. It sounds like I´m going to be doing a lot of eating when I get home!

Salty Dog

If you can believe it, my own mother called me out for being a slacker with my blog! Well, here is one more post from the time my brother was visiting. There is an area here called the Salineras, or salt pans. Apparently the earth and water in this area are very rich with salt. A stream flows out of a mountain and into the pans that you see in the pictures. When the water evaporates from the pans it leaves piles of salt behind. Who knew? (Certainly not me.)

Lost City of the Incas

One of the main reasons tourists come to Cusco is to access Machu Picchu. When people find out that I have been living in Cusco for three months, one of the first things they ask is what I thought of Machu Picchu. People seemed astounded to find out that I hadn´t visited yet. Well, now I can say that I have been to Machu Picchu, otherwise known as the lost city of the Incas.

Machu Picchu was recently voted one of the new wonders of the world, and it is truly an incredible place. The setting is gorgeous and the workmanship that went in to building the city is astounding and has stood the test of time. There is no written or oral history of Machu Picchu. We know only what archeologists have surmised since the ruins were discovered in 1911. The lack of information on such an incredible place makes it that much more intriguing and mysterious; Why was Machu Picchu built? What events occured in this place and why did the Incas want to wipe it from their history records?