Salkantay to Machu Picchu – Peru

The main event (if you will) of our travels through Peru was a five day hiking trip that reached a 4,600 meter pass beneath the beauty of the mountain, Apu Salkantay, which is sacred for the Inca, and culminated at the ruins of Machu Picchu. It was a pretty amazing trip, made more amazing by the fabulous company we had in our tour trip. Besides myself as the lone american (whew), there was Mari, her brother Tshilo, friend Julito, four fantastic Argentinos, two splendid individuals from Basque country in Spain, Crystal from Canada, and our absolutely amazing guide, Juana. We couldn’t have asked for a better group considering none of us knew all the rest before we started and we only had five intense days of hiking, sleeping, and carousing to get along with one another. Unfortunately Mari and my camera passed on to the sleepy world of death a day and a half before we reached Machu Picchu so we only have pics up to a certain point. Here are some of the highlights but if you have time and are interested in the exhaustive line of photos, you will have to follow this link because, well, we (read, I) take a exorbitant amount of photos.

New chickens!

So for the last week or so we have repeatedly had to catch and release our neighbors recently flight able chickens that prefer the shaded, vegetated, backyard of our house over the empty, dirt parking lot of a backyard that the neighbors, complete with yapping, undersized and overaggressive dogs. No wonder. Today Riley and I caught them and kindly imprisoned them in some remaining chicken wire and cardboard with water and snacks until I could talk with the neighbors. As there was no place at the neighbors to keep them from escaping to the shaded paradise of our yard, this was really the only option.

The conversation was quick and to the point. They don’t know what to do with them, and do I want them? Well seeing as I have a chicken palace of sorts in the backyard and I wouldn’t want the egos of Hayduke and Cracker to bloat any more than they already have, adding three new chickens to the mix seems convenient and the easiest way for all of us to live in relative harmony. So now we have three juvenile chickens who are attempting to keep their relative distance from the other original fab five of the backyard and of course gorging themselves on the overabundance of feed. In short time they will be fat I am sure.  And if either of them turn out to be a rooster, then we will have chicken for dinner.  I’ll keep you posted.

The two new chickens that appear to be of the Americauna breed – kind of a mut of the Araucana and other breeds.  The other one (not pictured) seems to be a mix of Rhode Island Red and maybe something else.

Making herself comfortable in the hen house.

The difference in size is quite noticeable between Hayduke and the little one in the back right.

A friend of a friend was on Jeopardy, so I’m sorta cool

I don’t know how many of you all grew up watching Jeopardy in the evenings with your family while eating dinner.  But I did.  Yeah that’s right, trivia game nerd alert.  But when I discovered that a co-worker’s friend was going to be on an episode of Jeopardy last week, we promptly wheeled the TV to the one cable hookup in the office (Jeopardy is on early here for some reason), grabbed some snacks and got all trivia gamed crazed while we cheered on the friend of a friend named Josh from Baltimore.  Well he lost in final Jeopardy to an “answer” about a “world leader” I had never heard of.  Anyways, he has a blog about comics where he basically bemoans the social implications/commentary that are intoned with old-time comic strips and has some ridiculous daily readership that only sounds like pressure to me.  So yeah, he’s basically a big deal in the world of comics blogging, and he posted a lengthy but very entertaining narrative of the secrets behind the mysterious cult world of Alex Trebec and Jeopardy that I highly recommend even if you were not screaming out trivia responses with a full mouth at the dinner table during much of your adolescence.  So check it out.

Walls and rooftops

In and around Cusco

Accordian busking in Cusco

Tshilo doubled as our tour guide

Mate de coca

The terraces of Moray

Ollantaytambo

Limping up the steps of Ollantaytambo

2.5/30

ok, so the title of this post has to do with measurements in time.  It’s not really a quiz, it’s just that I didn’t feel like explaining it all and you the reader, will have to just live with that and enjoy the pictures of flowers that have grown in our backyard.  Today is super special for reasons you may or may not be privy to.  Chances are it will stay that way.  But mostly, the pictures are for an amazing person in my life and that’s all you need to know.  Have a good day.