We've spent two days in Arequipa. It's beautiful here, and we're surrounded by mountains and volcanoes. I've been struggling a little with the altitude, but lots of water and coca leaf tea seem to be helping things along. Dair, while a little fuzzier than usual, is having less of a struggle. Sadly, no matter how much coca I consume, I don't seem to be catching a buzz; apparently the coca must be consumed in other manners to make it exciting. We spent yesterday an...

I did it, I did it, I did it, I did it!!!!!!!!!!I had two new "firsts" today; I took my first ride on a five person plane, and had my first experience vomiting on my own shoes. The upside to experiencing my first air-sickness was that as soon as the nausea hit, the anxiety completely disappeared, and the downside seems self-explanatory.We took an early morning flight over the Nazca lines, mysterious pre-inca carvings in the desert rocks of various geometric shape...

Day two in Peru and we're sitting on a bus heading from Lima to Nazca. After wandering the city for several hours, we got tired of not breathing and decided to heed the advice we'd been given about what to do in Lima- vacate as quickly as possible. In our one night there we did manage to check out the main square, Plaza de Armas, which was lovely and lined with old colonial buildings, including the presidential palace, several colorful plaster cows, reminiscent o...

Wow, so it's certainly been a good few years since my last "real trip", but as I'm preparing for my journey, I'm finding my head is spinning with all the new possibilities that exist. For my last long trek, which was longer ago than I care to acknowledge, we went crazy burning CDs and assessing how many we could carry- 10, 15, was 20 too excessive?-buying film, looking into phone cards to call our moms or make reservations, finding the perfect notebooks-and y...

So I've finally decided to start a blog. Yup after years of contemplation, it would seem that my desire to not become adept at the infamous and all too oft resorted to "copy-paste email" has driven me to this-blogging. I can't say if it'll stick, but you'll certainly find me here for the duration of my up-coming travels, regaling you with tales of adventure and happenstance or just spewing arbitrary ramblings; 'cuz who are we kidding, that's as likely as anythi...