Peru

We flew into Lima, checked out the historical district and the Gold museum, which was awesome. Its crazy how much European influence the cities in South America have, but then again I guess most cities have European influence because they are the ones that settled them. We also visited this Church with a crypt below which was pretty creepy. Then we went to Cuzco, which is a city at about 12,000 feet and a ton of the buildings are built right on top of Incan walls. Then we went into the Sacred Valley where we stayed in this little Peruvian cottage with our own cook and everything, she was so cute. The next day we headed off to Machu Picchu. The ruins themselves weren't that amazing, but the location and the scenery are what make it so cool. Also, not very much is known about the people that lived there so its not as interesting as Pompeii. Matt's birthday present from his parents was a one night stay at the Sanctuary Lodge, which is the only hotel at the entrance of the park. It was awesome and it was so nice to be able to get up early and walk to the entrance rather than take the windy hour bus ride from the town below. That was we got to see the ruins when they were really uncrowded. We made a critical blunder though. We came from Cuzco, which was really cold, and we were told just to take enough stuff to Machu Picchu for 2 days because the train wouldn't be able to hold all our luggage. So we packed thinking Machu Piccu would be cold and I took two long sleeved shirts and jeans. Little did we know that it was a few thousand feet lower and in the middle of the jungle so we were so hot! Plus we didn't know there were amazing hikes in the area, which we ended up doing in our long sleeves and jeans. Oh my gosh, I can't remember the last time I was that hot. One of the hikes was amazing, we hiked the main peak behind Machu Picchu called Wynupicchu, and the views were amazing.