¡Sue Esta Aqui!

As promised, Sue will share the memorable moments of her journey to the other side of the blog dimension...

I can´t believe that I´ve made it to Peru! After reading along with this blog for the past month, I have to admit that I was ridiculously excited to join in (and I guess I was also excited to join up with Jen and Chris and see some of South America too). It´s kind of like jumping into the television and suddenly becoming a character in one of your favorite shows. Pretty awesome.

The journey itself was fairly uneventful except for one somewhat surprising moment which reminded me that I wasn´t in the US anymore. As mentioned previously on this blog, the Lima airport is an entertaining place. Well, now I can also add "disturbing" to that description. I was expecting the glass case of crazy stuff collected at the security checkpoint (saw, rusty shovel, loaded gun, etc.) and the extremely out of place Dunkin Donuts. What I did not expect was the loud noices eminating from a covered stack of crates situated just in front of the Dunkin Donuts. As I went to check in for my connecting flight to Cusco, the kind woman at the LAN check-in counter noticed my continued glances in the direction of the stack of crates. In an effort to reassure me, she told me not to worry, that those were just "the cocks brought in for the cock fighting tournaments. You know, they happen every so often." Of course, no big deal! What?! I suppose if I had seen this anywhere else in Peru except in front of the Dunkin Donuts INSIDE the airport, I wouldn´t have been quite as surprised. But I guess that´s Peru. And sorry Tom, no pictures of the cocks...as you said, the coverage on this site is very spotty. After the excitement of the airport in Lima, I made it to Cusco, had an adventurous ride in a taxi to the hostel, and met up with Jen and Chris.

Jen here....Today, we went back to check out some more of the ruins around the Cusco area. We visited 4 different sites, but still ended up back at "sexy woman" as our favorite. The other sites offered some good views, but the ruins themselves weren´t all that impressive. After relentless efforts, Sue remained strong and refused to go on the rock slide (sorry fans, no video). Instead, she befriended an extremely cute puppy who belonged to a couple of girls who were enjoying the rock slide immensely. We walked around the grounds for a while and had a look at the incredibly huge stones used to build this place. It is still amazing, even a second time around.

We ended the afternoon with a HUGE lunch (pizza and an enormous and delicious crepe). Tonight we plan to meet up with Stacey, the Australian girl who we met while volunteering in Arequipa. Tomorrow is our tour to Machu Picchu so we won´t be able to write again until Monday night at the earliest. Hope you enjoy the photos!