#triptoperu

Our last destination before heading back to Lima was the Nazca Lines.  I’ve heard of them and seen them on documentaries and maybe on National Geographic magazines but I didn’t think I will actually get to see them with my own eyes.  We had very little time in Nazca before having to go back to Lima.  We planned to see them from air and luckily the weather was good enough for the air tour.  There is one small airbase where all the tourists go to get on a tiny plane to see the lines from above.  

A collegue of mine who was there about a half a year earlier then we were, told me we was not able to enjoy any of the scenes from the plane because he had really bad case of air sickness (he also had horrible case of altitude sickness all along his trip).  

Thankfully Laura and I were both super fine.

This is an interesting selfie where it looks like we are really good friends with the man sitting next to me and the women behind. ha ha ha.   The plane was super small and did not exactly feel safe but we survived and seeing the lines from above was amazing.  SO MYSTERIOUS! and SO VIVID! They are not some sort of weird lines that might be something, they are super clearly man made lines representing all sorts of shapes.  

Then we hired a driver to take us to the actual lines on the ground.  No one is allowed to actually go on the lines nowadays but there is this little station where you can drive into to look down at the lines.  

They were also selling bunch of souvenirs at the bottom of this little look tower where we did some last minute souvenir shopping.  

Then we were on a bus once again to Lima to catch our flight back to LA.  

On this day, we woke up to very cold and crisp Peruvian morning air with a lot of chickens.

This day was not as tough as the previous ones.  After breakfast, we were given time to just chill, in which Laura and I went into the town to explore a bit.  According to the google map, we were at place or town called Pueb Santa Teresa.  There wasn’t much to see.  The town was very small but we watched a bit as they were getting ready for a town event at the center of the town.  (Not sure what it was for)  

After our morning “free time”, our group walked a short distance to our lunch place along with many other trekking groups.  We actually stayed at this restaurant more than necessary and we assumed it was because our guides wanted to watch the soccer game.  Peru was playing at that time for the World Cup and if I remember it correctly it was first time Peru ever got to play so everyone was super excited.  So we had our super long lunch there where some people actually fell asleep.

Then we started our final walk towards the city of Aguas Calientes - which is like the gateway city to Machu Picchu.  I had such a hard time on my first and second day of trekking I had to ask Hilton how the roads were going to be that day and he said “flat as a table” - which wasn’t all the way true but not too bad in the end.  

There were always and AWAYS tons of people on the trek during our whole trek, which sort of gave me a sense of being in a huge group.  (They were mostly Americans)  During this whole period of five days I’ve only seen like one Asian person, who seemed to be always super quite and alone.  I guess I was too shy to talk to her (it would be kind of weird to just walk up to someone and say hi just because they are Asian? is it? not sure).  But later on the 4th day, we were in a same grocery store and she noticed my passport and talked to me.  We were both Koreans!  

Thankfully most of the road that day were flat and nice.  We even had chance to stop and buy or should I say “risk” ourselves of getting some ice cream.  The funny thing was us two were the only two person within our groups who did not get sick on this trail.  

Then we finally walked into Aguas Calientes!!!

It felt so good.  We had rest of the day (I believe we arrived in the last afternoon which gave us couple of hours till dinner).  We all checked into our hotels and were supposed to meet back at the train station to get our bags (because we sent them on our train from our last campsite as we walked over here).  

We took hot shower (yes!! hot water!!!)  

Got our bags (my toothbrush fell out from my backpack to the train station ground then I forgot about it and brushed my teeth with it without rinsing it ha ha)

Then we met back for dinner, at which point Dermot and Clyde met us back here.