I can´t even set the clock on my VCR...

It´s Palm Sunday and we are back in Cuzco for the day. Cari and I got up this morning and decided to give the hotel breakfast of toast, bread or pita with what appears to be ham a pass and venture out to get a good hearty one insted. We walked through the square looking for a place called Jacks we´d heard about and saw all the locals coming from church with their palm fronds. There was even a little procession around the square lead by a few of the priests and followed by a band consisting of a trumpet, trombone, what looked like a sousaphone and a bass drum. They didn´t sound too good but they were giving it their all.

Jacks is run by an Australian woman who we met and talked with for a little while. She opened the place about 6 years ago and has a young son Jack who was riding his new bike through the restaurant. Cute little blonde haired kid who shifted easily from speaking English to Spanish.

We had the Huevos Rancheros (flat tortilla with beans, cheese, two fried eggs and cilantro), pancakes and a side of fried potatoes and bacon. It was the best breakfast we´ve had on the trip.

Yesterday was the highlight of the trip so far (one of the reasons is in Cari´s blog) as we got to see Machu Picchu in all its glory. What an amazing place. As Chris and Cari have written below, it really blows you away when you first see it. It´s larger than I expected and even more beautiful in person than in the pictures.

You enter the complex from the side on one of the middle terraces and from there you can see the majority of structures. They stretch across the top of Machu Picchu toward Wayna Picchu and since we were there early in the morning the clouds still covered some of the buildings which gave the place an even more magical feeling. I´m having a hard time describing it because it´s really more than a site it´s a feeling too. You really do stand there in awe trying to take it all in and wonder in amazement at the work the Incans put into this place.

You can only imagine what it looked like in its prime with all the terraces full of plantings and the water system sending fresh water from a spring several miles away through the city. We were shown how they built the aqueducts to filter out the water and zig zag through the city to slow the stream to reduce erosion. They were truly ahead of their time in many ways.

The buildings themselves were meticulously positioned so they faced east and met the sunrise. The Temple of the Sun had two windows in them, one that caught the rays of light on the first day of the rainy season and the other on the first day of the dry season. The light would stream into the temple and cover the alter. Amazing how much they knew about the sun. I can´t even set the clock on my VCR and these guys were able to build something that caught the light of the sunrise on two specific days of the year. Unreal.

It was interesting to see the different kind of stone they used for different types of buildings. The Temple of the Sun was built using finely cut and polished granite (which was said to have been competely white when the Incans lived here) stone that fit together seamlessly using no mortar. Next to temple was built the home of city´s astronomer. It´s stones were less finished and while they still fit together tightly their corners were curved and not as straight as that of the temple. What was really amazing was that the wall behind the temple and astonomer´s house transitioned from the more crude stone on the house to the finely cut stone as soon as the temple structure began. The most beautiful stone work was only for the temples and the homes of the royals.

We walked around the compex for a little while looking at several of the other areas - Temple of the Condor (the condor is said to take your spirit to the afterlife so that you can be reborn), the Hitching Post of the Sun (during one particularly harsh winter when the King thought the Sun God had deserted them he ordered the building of this structure where it was said the sun was tied to the two hitching stones ensuring that the sun would not leave them again) and the Caretaker´s Hut from which the classic pictures are taken of Machu Picchu with Wayna Picchu in the backround.

At one point several of us broke off from the group and climbed to the peak of Wayna Picchu which has several ruins as well as an amazing view of Machu Picchu. The hike was challenging and took about 40 minutes to the top, but it was all worth it once you got there. I took a bunch of pictures but I´m sure they won´t do this place justice. You feel like you´re on top of the world.

We stayed up there a while just soaking in the view and then headed back down to meet up with the rest of the group. That´s when I popped the question to Cari and happily she said yes. It would have been really embarassing if she had said no since there were a ton of people around.

We stayed for another hour or so and decided to head back as we had been there for about 6 hours. We could have stayed longer and seen more but we hadn´t eaten anything since 6 in the morning and we were all getting worn out.

On the bus ride back down the mountain we encountered a little boy on one of the switchbacks who waved at us and yelled "GOOOOOOODBYYYYYEEEE". We drove a little farther around another corner and there he was again, "GOOOOOOODBYYYYYEEEE" with a wave. Same thing around the next corner. And weren´t exactly going slowly either. Then we´d drive a stretch of about a minute or so and turn another corner and there he was waiting for us with the same routine. Turns out the kid was running straight down the mountain on trails cut by the locals and meeting the bus. When the bus reached the bottom of the mountain and crossed the bridge over the Urubamba River there was the boy again running across the bridge in front of us. On the other side the bus stopped and picked up the kid who stood at the front of the bus and yelled "GOOOOOOODBYYYYYEEEE, AAAAAAADIIIIIIOOOOOOS", "GRAAAAAAAACIAAAAAAAAASS" and then pulled out his purse and walked through the bus looking for tips! I´d read about this on several websites and totally forgot about it until the kid got on the bus. Cute kid but still, that was a little much.

The rest of the day was spent catching a train to Ollantaytambo and then a bus back to Cuzco. I listened to my iPod and slept most way.

Today is another free day and Cari and I are just going to walk around the city a bit and see if we can find something to buy.

Tomorrow we are off to Puno and Lake Titicaca for the last of our adventure.

B