Peru Trip!

April 23rd to the 29th -- Trip to Peru with my favorite people :)

We had some issues with our flights getting canceled so we had to get a plane a day earlier (better for me :] more days in Peru!)

Because of our schedules, it ended it up being some of us going on one day, and another on others.
So on Tuesday at around 4am me, Erin, Libbie and Brian left for the airport to go to Lima --> Cuzco.

We arrived around noon in Cuzco.
It was an absolutely beautiful city in the center.
The buildings and stores in the center were mostly brick and the scenary was so beautiful.

Louisa and Daniel arrived on Wednesday and Ally on Thursday.

We explored the city the three days, going shopping and just walking around, going to the chocolate museum, taking the trolly tour and eating amazing kiwi galletas and drinking delicious tea.

We went to Machu Picchu city on a train on Friday in the morning, arrived in the afternoon and did a hike up a mountain and saw the ruins in the far distance. Me and Erin were literally dieing behind the athletes but it was definitely worth the hour and a half and definitely thankful that me and Erin were at the same pace :)

On Saturday morning we left the hostal at around 5:30am to hike up the mountain to get to the ruins before 7am when there are less people.

 

Being a bit sick from the cold of Cuzco and having the-weakest-stomach-ever, it was rather a suicidal hike for me but again, it was so worth it when we arrived at the top and saw the view of the mountains.

The most amazing part about this trip to the ruins was that I ran into Devan (T) at the top of Machu Picchu! We knew that we would be in Cuzco at the same time but it was such a coincidence running into her with her study abroad program at the ruins :)

I didn't feel good the majority of the time I was there but I took a couple minutes to throw up off trail and I felt so much better after.

But anyways, we went back to Cuzco that day and left the next day for the day to Lima.

Honestly speaking, Lima was very similar to Santa Monica where I live and it didn't make me feel like I was in a different country at all. It's definitely not a bad thing nor a good thing, it was just such a big change coming from Cuzco and going to Lima. It definitely did make me miss home a bit though (surprising, considering I have never even had the slightest thought of homesickness since coming here..) But obviousy it still doesn't mean that I want to go back just because I went to a place similar to Santa Monica.

It was definitely a very clean, pretty place but it was so filled with foreigners I really felt like I was just back home in LA. If I were to live in Latin America, this probably wouldn't be the place I would choose to live.

Anyways, we just basically sat around and had a picnic on the grass area on the cliff over the beach and layed around playing cards for a while and went grocery shopping. We had a little "mock" graduation for Daniel and had icecream together :)
We went back to the airport and all of us basically sat around studying and cramming everything we had to catch up on for a weeks worth of missed classes.

Quite an exhausting trip considering the hiking and getting sick but totally worth the price and missed classes :)