Ella Goes to Machupicchu!!!!

After a wonderful night sleeping with hot water bottles (awesome!), we woke up in the morning and prepared for LUXURY. It’s such a foreign word to us backpackers, I know, but Aba wanted to be pampered for a day and therefore spent extra money on First Class seats on a train to Machupicchu, Peru! Yes!! Earlier, in one of my online classes, I had to do research on my “dream vacation”. I don’t have one, so I did Macchupicchu! Therefore, I was quite excited to see it. Before I forget, I forgot to mention that the night before we were served tea with leaves. Asher didn’t want his, so I drank both cups. Only later did I find out that the leaves were coca leaves, the plant used to make cocaine. After a cigar in Cuba and now (almost) cocaine in Peru, my friends are going to have a field day!

Speaking of which, that night I was able to call my friend Una! It was great! Anyway, we were supposed to take the train straight from Cusco to Machupicchu, but since it is the rainy season they weren’t operating. Therefore, we had to ride a bus for 1.5 hours until we reached the station. However, on the way, we got to stop and pet some llamas and alpacas! Yay!

The train was wonderful. We were served excellent food and I had a really good mint-pineapple drink. Troy seemed to be in heaven and Asher looked like Trixie does when she puts her head on a car wheel to feel vibrations (bliss).

We had to take another bus up to Machupicchu, where we were met by our guide. When I saw the site, I was not disappointed. The photos I had seen online were not photoshopped to look better, after all. It was slightly smaller than I had imagined, but it was wondrous. Beautiful stones, beautiful buildings, beautiful vegetation, beautiful landscape. You must go to see it yourself. Our guide explained the complex and about how it was basically an Incan university. At one point, it rained. We were drenched, but I was astounded to see the ancient irrigation system still working. Waterfalls of water poured neatly down the mountain.

Also, we saw chinchillas with (another) surprising likeness to Trixie! The look like squirrel-rabbit hybrids; Bruno would die!

I would like to mention how smart Aba’s planning was. Everywhere online, people say to go first thing in the morning. We went in the afternoon. Because everyone had been recommended to go in the morning, there was almost no one there! Genious! There were probaly less than 100 people, tiny comapred to the 5000 people that visit daily. Go Aba! On our way out, I bought Una another postcard (Machupicchu and a llama, how great is that?!) and Aba and Troy got our passports stamped with a Machupicchu stamp. Cool! We ate lunch and got on the train, eating a dinner of alpaca! We got home and took showers, only going to sleep at about midnight. Oh! I almost forgot. While it was raining, Aba kept saying “don’t whether the storm, learn to dance in the rain” over and over and over and over and over until I promised to include it in the blog so he would stop; so, here it is.

The next morning Asher did homework and other than one quiz I worked on some personal projects. I don’t have anything to do because my online math teacher is very slow in posting his lessons, I’m waiting for my last lesson in our community-building Connect class, and I have to wait for other people in my class to respond so I can reply to them. However, I am currently seven weeks ahead of everyone and am two weeks ahead of Asher, so I’ve got tons of free time. When Asher got to a stopping point with his homework, we wandered around Cusco.

We stopped at a small church and a very gloomy cathedral. The walls were all grey and black and there was hardly any light. The only cool part about the cathedral was their painted version of The Last Supper. Instead of ‘ordinary’ food, they were eating Guinea Pigs!!

We ate lunch on a balcony, and as we did we saw Mormons! We are the weirdest family ever because we actually enjoy spotting them. As you may know, we found some near our home in Colorado, we saw a pair in Bueno Aires, and now there were two more! WATCH THE BOOK OF MORMON. We were lucky enough to accidentally capture them in a panorama, so enjoy!