Archive for May, 2011

Perhaps appropriately, it is not as easy as you would think to get to Machu Picchu.  This is good for a couple of reasons – keeps crowds down (a little), brings in money to keep things nice there, and makes it feel like a real adventure when you finally make it.  We did plenty of research about getting to the site.  Turns out, it is not accessible by road alone.  You basically have three choices about how to get there and then within those choices are lots of variations.  The main methods are:  hike, take a long bus ride and a short train ride and a short bus ride, or take a shortish bus or taxi ride, medium length train ride and a short bus ride.  We went for the last option since it is generally considered the easiest and the safest.

We set off the day after we got back from the jungle and headed for a minivan taxi thing.  They leave as they fill up and take you to Ollyantaytambo, a town about half of the way to Machu Picchu where you can get the train the rest of the way.  We met a new friend in the van, a really nice guy from Helsinki, and had lunch together in Ollyantaytambo before catching the train.  As we were walking from lunch to the train I got a horrible churning in my stomach and just knew that I was getting sick.  Not convenient considering we had a 1.5 hour train ride ahead of us and were going somewhere fairly remote and not accessible by road!

Well, I survived the train ride.  The train itself was really nice, leather seats, windows in the roof so you could see the views, snack served.  And the ride was scenic.  Really beautiful in fact.

Peru Rail Train to Machu Picchu

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Since I’m so incredibly behind on these blog posts this tour may not get quite as much attention as deserved.  However, Justin has already put up our wildlife report and I’ll sketch out a few of the tour details.

Firstly, we went to the Manu National Park Cultural Zone with Amazon Trails Peru and would absolutely recommend this company.  Since we only had a short time in Peru we did the shortest tour that got us close to the wildlife reserve.  We had been a little concerned that if we didn’t make it all the way into the reserve we wouldn’t see very much.  This turned out to not be a problem though and for the short amount of time we had we saw so, so much.

We also need to give a lot of credit to our guide, Carlos.  He was excellent – knew all the birds, found us all kinds of things to look at that we would have missed, and could tell us all about the plants and how they are used by the people who live in the jungle.  He also carried about 80 pounds of wildlife reference books (including one he had put together with his friends) and spent lots of time helping us record what we saw.  Awesome!

The tour was 4 days and 3 nights.  We started in Cusco and had a very long van ride out to the jungle.  On the way we stopped at some pre-Incan burial ruins.

Pre-Incan burial towers

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Hey loyal readers.  We are incredibly far behind on these blog posts, but hopefully can get that remedied in the next few days.  We are now in beautiful Paraty, Brasil, at a hostel right across the road from the beach!  And it only took about 52 hours of continuous travel to get here!

So blog to come soon, right now it is time to kayak!

While Justin puts together posts about our recent jungle trip and we try to get some photos from Machu Picchu uploaded I thought I’d give an update on our wedding quilt fabric search.  Unlike Chile and Argentina, Peru produces TONS of beautiful textiles.  The only unfortunate thing is that they are not really materials designed for quilting, but we picked the closest things we could get.  We ended up with an incredible tablecloth and two placemats which we will cut up for the quilt.

This fabric with the white background is the tablecloth.  We took a really quick picture before sending it off, and didn’t get the best part – it has animal designs woven in some of the strips.  It is beautiful and will be hard to cut up, but we loved the colors and the designs.

Peru Fabric Number 1

These two are the placemats.  They are much more characteristic of the colors in Peru.  Very bright and cheerful.  The background fabric of one is green and the other is red.  Should make for an amazing quilt block!!!

Peru Fabric Numbers 2 and 3

Hazel and I just got back from our trip to the rainforest! We had a blast, and that will be explained in another post, but we also saw and photographed TONS of wildlife! In this post I’ll introduce you to most of the species we saw by name and picture!

We couldn’t have done this without the great help of our guide Carlos, who was working for Amazon Trails Peru our tour operator. He did a really spectacular job!

Even though this post has a TON of pictures, there are many more on SmugMug. Check out our BEST photos, and the REST of them!

Reptiles and Amphibians

I saw each of these on my second night walk in the jungle, except the last two which we found during a daytime walk:

• Phyllomedusa Palliata
• Phyllomedusa Tomopterna
• Oreobates Quixensis
• Poison Dart Frog
• Juvenile White Cayman!

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