It all started out with a 4am wakeup call in our sweet 6 bed dorm at the Pariwana Hostel in Cuzco. After checking our bags into storage we dragged ourselves and our hiking gear up the road to hop on the bus, destination: Salkantay Trek to Machu Picchu. The hike was a 4 night/5 day affair covering about 40 miles during which we would be climbing up and over Salkantay pass, at over 15,200 it would be the highest any of us have been. Needless to say we had a little ...

MKE-ORD-MIA-CUZ. BAM!! After a long night of air travel we finally touched down in Cusco and were greeted at the airport by the smiling faces of Gina and Adrian. A few months of planning and anticipation had finally culminated with the first official gathering of the High Elevation Congregation in Cusco, Peru. Our HEC crew consists of the world travelers Gina and Adrian, G's brother Bryan, and longtime Wisconsin friends Lance, Steve, and myself, guest blogger ...

They say Lima is big, loud, and smoggy and they are right. The place has a level of chaos we hadnt experienced in quite some time and we were thankful to have found a hostel close by to the bus station in the old part of town so we didnt have to deal with a taxi or otherwise figure out getting across town with all our stuff. We strolled into the 1900 Hostel and dropped our bags before immediately heading back out for some much needed food. We had one thing on o...

We awoke bleary eyed in Casma after a long overnight bus ride down from Mancora. Our dazed stupor quickly morphed into irritation as we were dropped on the side of the road instead of at the Bus terminal which is where we had been told we would be delivered. The problem with being left on the side of the road is that you are at the mercy of the taxi and tuk-tuk drivers and therefore, more often then not, liable to be screwed in some way...even if only mildly. Thi...

It was another exciting 9 hour bus ride between the adorable, colonial mountain town of Cuenca to the dusty, run down beach-town of Mancora. Beginning bright and early at 7:15am, the trip was made even worse by a shady move, or so we thought, made by the bus company. They dropped us at the immigration check-in office to Ecuador, not Peru, which was where we needed to be. There was no way to stamp out of the country and enter Peru at this office. Without an idea...