Man.  The last few hours have been some of the best in the last few weeks.  Getting out of big city Cusco has been so refreshing, and now I've found myself in one of the most beautiful places I've been in my life.  We took a breathtaking taxicar ride with another girl, woman and child through the Sacred Valley to get here, patchworked hills between the giant jagged mountains of the Andes kept us quietly staring out the window. 
It was stormy when we left Cusco. we had spent the hours before leaving trying to find the building to get our tickets to Machu Picchu, arriving just after it closed.  The taxi driver couldn't even find the place without wandering for a while, and we just accepted it wasn't gonna happen for us, and there was nothing we could do about it-so we sang and danced to Maroon 5's"Payphone" in the back of the cab instead.  Once we found our ride to Ollantaytambo, it began to hail and lightening as we drove up and out of the city.  The driver weaved around cars on semi blind curves in the hills and hail, but we felt warm and trusted in his quiet and calm confidence.
Ollantaytambo is a very small town literally nestled between the mountains on the valley floor.  We got out of our car and felt strong and fresh winds that I'm pretty sure just lifted both of our spirits about 100 points. We walked and found our hostel, called casa de wow (lolz), and were just so pleasantly surprised.  This place is great.  I don't really know how to describe it, but I'll try.  We came in the front door, greeted by the hostel's owner, Winn, who showed us our room which was right inside the cosy two floor place.  In the center, A giant 6 foot dreamcatcher hangs low next to the spircal staircase to the second floor. The room I'm in now, the living room, is small, warm and comfortable with cozy red couches, stonework walls, and tapestries on the wall. We were soo happy to see a guitar in the corner upon arrival, and I get to listen to Leslie play and sing while I write this and drink my cup of tea. 
After dropping our things, we walked to find a place to stay for our second night, because casa de wow is booked tomorrow, and found a place down the street, where one of the people who run it showed us the terrace.  Looking out on the town past him and leslie talking, I was just dying inside, or being born, I don't know, maybe that's dramatic, as I saw the ruins beyond them on the hill.  An Incan emporer built this town and his royal estate on the hill here hundreds of years ago, and served also as a stronghold for the leader of the Incan resistance at the time of Spanish conquest.  Just standing there on that mountain.  Right there. Gosh.
After we walked through the rain and had a delicious delicious lunch, we walked through some more rain up a stone pathway that leads to more, smaller Incan ruins.  It was getting dark by now, but we reached a point that had a structure that served as an Incan refrigerator and sat on the edge of the cliff to take in where we were.  I feel so alive in the rain.  I accredit it to growing up in Oregon, but I feel most relaxed, most myself, most in touch with my emotions when the streets are damp.  Looking down into the valley, and up into the low, thick, marshmallowey yet gray clouds, I felt encapsulated in Ollantaytambo, a feeling I don't think I've ever really realized before.  We headed back down the mountainside and found our way back to our hostel. 
Tonight is the full moon also.  While making tea, Winn read a horoscpe of sorts concering tonight's moon.. I don't remember much, but something about Aries moon causing some problems but to try and go with the flow instead of going back into familiar patterns, time to get your shit together, that's at least what I remember now.  It just felt very relevant.  Horoscopes all aside though, we are in the Sacred Valley the night of the full moon and we are waking up at like 4am tomorrow to ride one of the most beautiful train rides in the world up to Macchu Picchu.  Feels pretty awesome.  Ai.

Like I said, tomorrow is Macchu Picchu.  It may be raining, but that may just be perfect.  Love you all.

Emily

Travels With Charley: In Search of America

The beginning of this novel by Mr. John Steinbeck seemed too relevant to ignore:

"When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ship’s whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, I don’t improve; in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable. I set this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself.

When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find in himself a good and sufficient reason for going. This to the practical bum is not difficult. He has a built-in garden of reasons to choose from. Next he must plan his trip in time and space, choose a direction and a destination. And last he must implement the journey. How to go, what to take, how long to stay. This part of the process is invariable and immortal. I set it down only so that newcomers to bumdom, like teenagers in new hatched sin, will not think they invented it. 

Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration is an entity, different from all other journeys. It's has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. I feel better now, having said this, although only those who have experienced it will understand it."

Cuzco Continued.

it is a rainy day here is cuzco. i think pais, em and i are going to take a day to just sit in a cafe and slacker lounge. michael robert would be so proud.

i think we deserve a day like that. yesterday, we had the most amazing sun bleached day. we ate at a favorite spot of paisley´s called jack´s. the food felt so northwest and comforting. fresh and beautiful eggs, avacado, smoked trout, perfectly herbed and spiced with coffee on the side. i swear, i think emily and i have taken a picture of 87% of the things we have eaten while abroad. so many colors and flavors and types; we can´t get enough.

after breakfast we hauled our asses up soo many cobble stone stairs to get to Cristo Blanco. literally, White Christ. and this was one huge White statue Christ, arms outstretched with the dramatic under lighting for when night falls on the city. but, it was sunny and around noon when finally wheezed our way to the monument. warm wind was blowing, i had that tinge of sunburn around my temples, there was a man playing chironga, locals just taking in the panoramic view of their city, and even a little baby lamb. when you have a formula like that, all is beyond right in the world. we sat in the shadow of cristo for quite a while, the collective feeling was just appreciation and intense warmness.

surprisingly, the best part of this day came after cristo. we decided to walk a different way back down and towards town. just over a small hill, to the left of our resting place, a crazy volcanic rock structure buldging up from the hills caught my eye. walking towards it, i realized the space around this rock was tiered, and the space was huge and looked intentionally laid out. i asked paisley what it was and she said, all nonchalantly, that this place was an ancient Incan ceremonial site. uhm, geeking out preceeded to follow for the next hour. at least. i was mesmorized. right above the city, right beyond an old spanish catholic idol was this place, this insanely old, insanely beautiful, calculated and meaningful place. i think pais and em started walking a few lengths ahead of me so they would not have to hear my annoying rambling surprise and appreciation. people gathered around that rock. that same rock that caught my eye while only a few hundred feet away. the orgnanic beauty and history of this place was taking over. i could not control myself. i was in complete awe.

crazy to me that these two beautiful beacons of past empires stood so close together. i have picked up on a constant theme while here in Peru; the Spanish loved to distract past societies, and perhaps even current ones from the incredible accomplishments of the ancient Incan population. they would move the stones of temples built for appreciation of the sun and moon and water to construct grand, albiet, beautiful colonial style catholic cathedrals. in this case, next to an obviously important gathering place of the Incans, a huge huggy cristo outshines, or attempts to outshine what stood before. that kills me! but some of the stones seem just too large to be moved, the history too big to budge and the mysticism is still tangible. i could not help but feel unnerved and almost unworthy tramping on ancient ground. the wind was blowing so hard against my face. either it was trying to push me out or welcoming me with the dramatic gusts.

i anticipate tonight more good food, wonderful company, and apparently a trivia night at an english style pub. cuzco has been relaxing. there is a total northwest vibe here. so many eugene-like ex patriots. dreads and pipes and all. there is such familiarity thousands of miles away. we are even going to a cafe run by a man from nampa, ID. you hear that, joe? oh that crazy small world strikes again!

-leslie

Took this during a stop on our way from puno to cusco. Three mountain ranges collide here!

uneven stairs

Right now I am sitting in my friend Paisley's apartment in Cusco, and we've had a great day so far. Except I totally broke the shower here. I was turning the shower head and lost my balance, and ended up pulling the shower head half out of the wall. Whoops, PVC pipe come undone. Because of this I felt I owed paisley a clean house so that's what we did for the first part of our day. Before we found huge 7 sole lunch of a fresh salmon pan fried with potatoes and seasoned rice and salad made in front of us at the smaller market in town. Eyes still on. It was awesome actually. (7 sole is like $2.25 by the way.) Yes! But you guys don't even know what we've been up to the last few days!

Picking up where Leslie left off, we did trek across town, and our hopes and wishes for the new inn were granted and then some! Duque Inn really saved us. Ricardo, the inn keeper, had replied to our desperate email, assuring us that they would be waiting for us with brazos abiertos. open arms. which is just what we needed after a night of little to no sleep in the terrible bothy hostel. We walked up the uneven stairs (characteristic of a lot of places here) and found our room. The fourth floor room had panoramic views of Puno and the lake. Brass bands playing and cannons going off woke me from the nap that I had fallen into that afternoon. we had to get down there! down at the plaza, we joined the crowds to watch dancers in traditional festival wear. Obviously, that was awesome to see. Partly because the performers were between 16 and 25 years old, and so proud to show off their culture. I tried to think of anything back home comparable, and couldn't, really. Which seems a little sad.
Anyway, We finished that night off with a couple hours in a local bar with our first pisco sours and it just felt so right.

The next day, we took a tour of Lake Titicaca. For hundreds of years, people have been living on man made reed islands there, fishing from reed boats and living in reed houses. Which is just amazing really. People still do this. Super unfortunately, our tour was tragically exploitative and I just felt like I needed to apologize the whole time we were there. Ugh. We should have listened to lonely planet when they called it "reed Disneyland." The next stop was the island of Taquile, which was really beautiful. Hot sun, green trees, bright flowers, llamas, people in their brightly colored indigenous wear, cobblestone paths, all at such an elevation to literally take your breath away. We hiked up the side to see over the expanse of the lake into Bolivia. If the lake was any bigger we couldn't have seen it, it is just so giant. Big enough to birth the sun? Maybe.

Sorry for such a delay. We will be posting again soon. Love to everyone back home!

Emily

puno - oh no!

it´s morning here in puno and emily and i have been scrambling the last 30 or so hours to figure out what to do next. the hostel we chose here had some mixed reviews, but we were optomistic and signed up. whoops!

well, we have barely gotten a taste of the city and feel anxious to leave, but i really dont think it is Puno´s fault. soooo, we are going to give it another day. we found a different guesthouse across the main square and are going to trek our hopeful bootays over there to check it out.

i think both of us were expecting a little, quaint lakeside town, easy to access ferry boats, and less of a city vibe, but it´s huge here! we came around the bend in our bus and saw all of the lights sprinkling the hills around the lake and the busy streets filled with vendors and shop fronts just below us and maybe both had a moment. an anxious moment.

breathing here is a trip, also. i keep trying to put words together to describe it. it is like you are permanently excited and anxious about something. but don´t include the butterfly stomach feeling, just the isolated throat and mouth area. we are crazy high up! in the mountains by an amazing gigantic lake! woowee. just trying to catch my breath up here is a incredible feeling. i haven´t yet, quite honestly.

our bus ride here was something else. we booked it last minute and got lucky. the bus was comfortable and clean, and had these huge windows. driving out of Arequipa while gazing through these windows couldn´t have been better. i really loved the city, it was a wonderful first stop. so cruising by the colors and people was great way to say goodbye. once out of town we started winding through the mountains and hills. rich brown slopes with slightly white tops, and vegetation i had never seen before. when i looked really close i could see the alpaca munching away in groups, just blending in to the mountainsides. such a feast for my eyes! then taking the curve around and down to get our first glimpse of lake Titicaca (which apparently is translated to Brown Cat... i know, right? what?) was just expansive. huge and deep gem blue splattered below and against brown tumbling mountain. ayiyi. our bus stopped at a lookout point and we ran to the summit point to capture that photo op. running. whew. in that altitude, for like 50 yards socked me in the chest. crazy crazy that simply our location on this earth can do that to us. make my body feel vastly different. 

i think it is time to let this city take hold though, get a little lost. the map they gave us at the hostel only covers about a 6 square block portion of Puno, so this should get interesting. all i need to do is find the lake shores, somewhere to take it in. according to Andean myth, this was the lake that gave birth to the sun, as well the father and mother of all Incan peoples. i can get into that. i could go for a little rebirth, too.

number two pero numero uno

well hello friends and family! Emily here. The last couple days have been muy interesante.  Getting here, was definitely an emotional experience for this girl.  Getting off the tiny plane walking down the steps into the cold yet sooo bright outdoors, mountains so close and soo big was pretty surreal.  In the plane I had been trying to formulate sentences on how to interact with the taxi driver en español, quite honestly, trying to prepare myself for the days and weeks to come all in one moment, cursing myself for the mental block that kept me from preparing ahead of time was getting me super overwhelmed, but when I looked past Sleeping Leslie with her head against the wall out the window of the plane to see this mountainous land, it started to hit me.  I bought this ticket and now I am here.  On another continent. Whoa.  We are in Peru.

Since then, I´ve had one small meltdown, two cappuccinos, lots of unwarranted attention, and a great time with my girl Leslie.  Days feel long when you don´t have much to do, but we walk. we walk, we see, we smell, we talk, we people watch, and try to muster up confidence to use our spanish more often.

Like today in the cafe we chose for our daily caffiene fix.  The two who ran the place were pretty young, seemed pretty in love (at least on their way there), and the guy was very nice and helpful.  He was my first victim.  We sat at our table in the corner and I used ye old spanish dictionary like a noob to formulate my first complete sentence that I think was correct. It was "¿Puede usted darme la santayseña por la wifi?" (lols). He smiled at me and corrected me: "contraseña."  In my head, i cursed at leslie´s fucked up spanish dictionary,  but he was happy to help me enter it into my phone.  Later, Leslie asked for a bottle of water and after that I even asked him if he knew of any restaurants for dinner that served Arequipan specialties.  It was like a little Spanish lesson with someone who was willing and even happy to help us and listen to us jumble our words.  Then, Sexual Healing came on over the sound system and all was well in the world.  Shout out to Daddy. (Nicky).

Another nice moment of today was the time we spent in la Plaza de Armas.  This place is beautiful guys.  You can look it up if you feel, but I´ll set you the scene.  It was a warm day today, the sun really works it´s magic here heatwise.  The square is a city block, at one end there is a beautiful white stone church with two belltowers, the snowcapped mountains rising up close behind. There is a fountain flowing in the center, palm trees scattered through out.  There are tons of people.  We have been to the plaza a few times now, passing by, and even at 7:30 in the morning, the plaza is full of people.  It is so great to me.  I love it.  Anyway, there were still about 5x as many pigeons as people, and the children.  The children!  They loved to play with the pigeons.  Little ones, two of whom we named Mr and Mrs Toddles had no fear.  Mr Toddles just sat on the cobblestone and the pigeons walked around and on him, he was just having a ball.  Freaking cute.  This would NEVER happen in the US.  People hate pigeons where we are from.  I bet these kids have killer immune systems. Anyway, evening started to fall and as soon as the shade came, it was time for pants.

Tomorrow, we leave in the afternoon for Puno.  There we will be at the edge of Lake Titicaca which I hope to get shown around on a boat.  I hope my reading is not too painful to read, I may not be as eloquent as my dear friend Leslie.  But man.  It´s happening.  Every now and again I retreat miles away into space and look at the globe and I am stoked at where I am on it.  Awh yeah.  Una adventura.  By the way, when I get home, expect me to speak in spanglish.  It´s gonna be a hard habit to break.  Love ya´ll.

Emily

i have tried this before.

ok. i cannot tell you guys how many times i have started a blog, a tumblr, a something - or - thought of starting a blog, a tumblr, a something - specialized and well thought out, only to fail at posting, or fail at creating.

emily is my witness, my partner in crime and we are going to do this. we want to keep anyone who is interested updated and that is just the bottom line.

so i´m blaming you,  hypothetical readers, for making us follow through and be accountable for something.

sadly enough, i had even started a post the night before we left and did not finish. classic. it was all about how nervous my belly was, and how i was not so super stoked on the three layovers in my near future, but now i have lived all that. weird how that works.

the flying was rough though. i love being on planes and being in the air. there is something so In Limbo about it that really suits my fancy, but this did not feel like normal flying. it felt a bit like a permanent free fall down down down until we finally touched pavement in Arequipa, Peru. that sinking dropping gut feeling just never left. i am usually glued to the window and ooing with all my might, but 18 hours of idontevenknowwhatisgoingon and i did not even jolt awake for the landing. reeaally freaking sad because the mountains here are Insane and i am sure the birds eye view would have rocked my world. they look a little like the tetons, just jutting up behind us with subtle snow caps and lightly forested foothills. huge and so close.

the plane was small, as was the airport we arrived at. morning here is beyond bright. super true sky blue against this place that is nicknamed the White City for the color of the rocks and mountains. even the spanish colonial style cathedrals and shops mirror this surreal sheen. such a contrast to the evergreen i had been inhabiting the last few weeks before departure.

we were both totally wigged out in the taxi. just staring out our respective windows. half asleep, me feeling half alive but also soo stimulated by the small cars honking, ads, people, the city tucked in the midst of these mountains. gosh, i´m telling you. these mountains. i am not a huuge mountian girl, i kinda dig bodies of water a little more, but there is something about these ones. tomorrow we plan on crossing the town for a better view in the morning.

i think we are both still completely freaked out, and i guess i did not think it would be scary, but it is. wandering the old cobble stone streets tonight though, i remembered something my grandma robert told me of her one time abroad in France with my grandfather. whenever she looked at the moon, she remembered it was just the same moon she knew in Washington and that eased her nerves a little. i saw that tiny thumbnail moon tonight and that sameness was the first thing i thought. so i suppose i will keep my eyes up at night, and hope the experience outruns any of that silly fear.

¡mira la luna!

-leslie