Tourist.

We have been so busy being as touristy as possible in Peru. Actually, the majority of our first day was spent catching up on sleep and then eating a really big dinner in Cusco's Plaza de Armas, which is enormous and beautiful. Yesterday, we got ourselves up and sorted out our transportation to Quito, which made us all feel a million times better. It'll take about two and a half days on bus, but we're game haha. The seats are called semi-camas, which means half beds. They don't recline all the way, but from the picture they look nice and comfy. Our bus from Cusco to Lima and our bus from Lima to Quito both leave at 6 pm, so maybe we'll sleep for the majority of the time. Hopefully. After we got that all straightened out, we took a mini-tour of Cusco. Our bus took us to six major sites in the city.  All of them were sites of old Inca ruins. I'm always a little unsure how to feel around ruins.  Sometimes its just so hard to imagine what it used to look like, especially at the sites we saw yesterday. They had been dismantled by the Spaniards during the Conquest for materials to build Catholic churches. The only parts remaining were the huge boulders the Spaniards couldn't transport.  After the tour, we did a little more city exploring on our own and ate yet another big dinner haha.

This morning we got up super early, checked our luggage into storage at the hostel in Cusco, and headed to the train station to catch our train to Machu Picchu! Of course, we read our tickets wrong, so we got to the station about an hour early haha. The train ride was quite comfortable, and the weather got really warm as we got closer, so I just napped in the sunlight. Like a cat haha. Our hostel is literally a five minute walk from the train station. And right in the center of town. It worked out really well. The only downside is that the internet signal doesn't reach to our room. I'm sitting on the stairs talking to my parents and uploading pictures haha. We took the bus ride up to the top of Machu Picchu. I can't even put into words how incredible it was, so I'm just going to direct everyone to my Facebook album ha. I feel very privileged to have gotten the opportunity to go. It was always something I dreamed about and said I was going to do one day. I can't believe it actually happened! Definitely one of the major highlights of the trip so far.

We're headed back to Cusco tomorrow morning on the train. We have a little time, because our bus to Lima doesn't leave until 6 pm. We'll arrive in Lima at 2 pm the next day, and then get on another bus to Quito at 6 pm again. We'll finally get to Quito at 8 am on Saturday, supposedly.

I think the people in the room I'm sitting outside of are getting down to bed, so I'll cut this short. My next post will be from Ecuador!!!