Peru keeps impressing me

On Saturday, I decided I needed a mental health day, and chose to stay home. I went grocery shopping, went for a run\walk, (but mostly a walk. I ran a total of about 6 blocks. And before you call me out of shape, I want to see how far you can run at this altitude before you keel over.) wrote some letters, and went salsa dancing for the first time in 3 weeks, which is far too long to go without a little salsa. My roommates left on Saturday to visit more ruins, but I decided to make a day trip of it on Sunday.

It was my first time venturing out on my own, but I did pretty well. I asked questions, and figured out which buses to get on and never got lost! On the way to Ollantaytambo, I had to sit right up front next to the driver. My seat wasn´t exactly attached to the bench, so everytime we turned I had to work really hard not to fall into the driver or the person sitting on the other side of me. It reminded me of a rental car we had in Mexico. After that bus, I had to take a mini-bus to Ollantaytambo. Mini-buses are basically vans into which they cram as many people as humanly possible. This was my first mini-bus experience, usually I just see people mashed up against the windows and think I´d much rather pay the extra soles for a cab. I arrived in Ollantaytambo in one piece and not too smushed, but at the same time as a large tour bus of gringos. I´ve been pretty lucky with my sighseeing in that it hasn´t been busy at any of the places I´ve been to. In Moray, we had the whole place to ourselves, which is pretty awesome, so I really can´t complain that I actually had to share my ruin with other people. (Although do they have to look so American? Seriously, the shorts, sneakers, white socks, and hats with the neck-flap thingy are never OK.)

My favorite thing about Incan ruins is that you pretty much have free range to explore. There are very few areas roped off, so you´re free to discover little stone hallways and crawl into caves. Basically, it´s easy to spend several hours climbing on piles of rocks. I´ve also discovered that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches taste best when eaten picnic style on an Incan terrace. Even better than a restaurant.

When I was changing buses to go to Chinchero, my next stop, I kept hearing someone call my name. I was wondering if there was a word in Spanish that sounds an awful lot like Kelli, when I realized it was my roommates, and a friend of ours, and they were on the bus I needed to be on. Somehow, I had caught up to them, even though they had an entire day´s head start. (I´m an efficient traveler.) So I joined them to Chinchero.

Chinchero impressed me, just like everything else in Peru has. Everything is bigger, better, and more beautiful than I expected. Chinchero is a small Andean market town, and all the locals were hanging out in front of the church when we went through. We even stopped to hang out with them. The views at Chinchero were pretty spectacular too, of course. My only complaint was that the little girls selling their friendship bracelets followed us forever. And when we politely said no, gracias, they would say (in English) "maybe later" until we kept saying no several laters more.