Stranger Than Fiction "I have to say, in all modesty, I've been to some truly breathtakingly beautiful places by any accounts. Machu Picchu takes the crown." - Anthony Bourdain For my dad, who taught me to never never never give up. As always, I'd prepared myself for the worst. It looked like I was actually going to make it to Machu Picchu, as impossible as that was to believe. Still, I armed myself against a myriad of potential disappointments. I could get fo...

Days 3 & 4: A Thousand-and-One Uses for Toilet Paper "There's always gonna be another mountain. I'm always gonna wanna make it move. Always gonna be an uphill battle. Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose. It ain't about how fast I get there. Ain't about what's waiting on the other side. It's the climb." - Miley Cyrus ("The Climb") By the third morning I was digging my First Aid kit out of my suitcase. I rooted through the contents - BandAids, AfterBite, Polyspo...

Day 2: Bombs, Bulls, Bridges and Beetle Backs "Everything you want is on the other side of fear." - Jack Canfield I woke up at 5AM thinking we were getting bombed. The blast could have been fireworks if it weren't so close. It shook the lodge and startled me into falling out of bed. When we met up after breakfast, Edwin explained that there was always a festival dedicated to some saint or other going on in Peru, and the people liked to celebrate with cannons (a...

Day 1: Don't Feed Horses Bananas "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." - Lao Tzu I have trouble believing I'm awake when suddenly I find myself cruising across a wide open plain at a flat-out gallop. I have absolutely no idea where we are. The landscape looks like something the Riders of Rohan would have ranged in The Lord of the Rings. To my left, a pair of sheep are charging along beside us, either panicked or infected by our energy. To m...

How To Make an Idiot of Yourself In a Peruvian Restaurant For Kippy. I'm sorry. "Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down." - Charles F. Kettering Have you ever been so happy it feels like your heart is going to explode? When I finally ventured out to explore Cusco for the first time, I walked right into a booming festiva...