Last night we experienced a 4.8 earthquake. The room and the beds swayed as well as the chandelier. Our first earthquake! We started the day with a walking tour of the lower part of ollantaytambo where the town is laid out as the incas designed it. People still live there and continue to practice some of the old inca ways, especially the way they live in their houses. After our town visit we took the train to Machu Picchu, an old single track train. The tracks fo...

The morning started with a river raft trip down the urubamba river. It was more like a float trip and was a totally perspective of the mountains. You can see the terraces that the incas built to turn the mountainsides into arable land that fed their civilization and is use today. From there we went to Ollantaytambo, ancient fortress that guarded the temples with the town below. (We climbed 250 steps.). It is almost unbelievable that they could have carried the hu...

Today we flew to cusco. From cusco we drove to lunch in the sacred valley and the urubamba river. This was an incredible overlook and our first sight of the inca terraces. We then drove the switchback road to the upper city of Pisac. This ancient city is located in a spectacular place, mountains all around with more distinctive terraces. We took a short walk around Pisac observing it's well built walls, temp,es and burial sights. Our guide marveled at what the in...

We met our local guide Jose who gave us a tour of the archeology museum in Lima. To arrive there we drove through San Isidro, another district in Lima, where most of the embassies are located. The Japanese embassy was well fortified with walls and guard towers and machine gun towers. This was in response to terrorist takeover of the embassy. Commandos dug tunnels for 4 months to rescue the hostages. At the museum we learned about of the stages of history. First b...

Arrived early am this morning. Did a short bus ride to Barrano, another district in Lima. Walked around a bit followed by a buffet lunch. We then did a short orientation walk through mira Flores, the district where we are staying. Walked through Kennedy park and back to the hotel via the beach path. Lima is on a high ridge with beach down below. We stopped along the path to visit lovers park with mosaic walls and a huge sculpture of lovers. We also watched the ha...