Chased by wild dogs!

We are now in Aguas Calientes, which is a little town right outside of Machu Picchu. It has been hard to blog while traveling...I am used to just writing in a journal, which I can do at any time. Anyways...I will try to catch you up on the past couple of days.

We landed in Lima at about 5:00 AM so we were very tired and couldn't check into our room until 10:00. We took a walk along the boardwalk and the beach...it was very foggy out so you couldn't see much of the surrounding hills and the ocean. We walked through a park that reminded me a lot of Gaudi's Guell Park in Barcelona...it was a park decorated with broken tiles on it's one long bench. In the middle was a statue of lovers in a very lewd embrass having a very passionate kiss. I will try to post pictures once I am home so you can see what I am writing about.

Later that day we met up with my cousin Tait and his friend Phong...we had a very late lunch (which was actually at a normal time for Peruvians) and walked around the city. There really is not a whole lot to see in Lima...Russell and I walked through the main Cathedral which had the body of Francisco Pizzaro (the conquistador that conquered Peru). Through a tour guide we got to learn about all of the atrocities that Pizzaro committed towards the indigenious people of Peru...sounded a little like what happened with the Native Americans.

Lima is a city of 1 million people and it smells like it. They do not regulate their emissions so there is so much exhaust that you rarely get a sunny day. I realize that America is the number one consumer in the world when it comes to fuel, but at least we are trying to do something about the pollution and the environment. It is really sad to think of this beautiful place slowly dying because of cars. Okay, off the soap box.

After Lima we flew to Cusco, which was an adventure in itself. Our flight was cancelled and we weren't told, so we arrived at the Airport with no way to get to Cusco and we had train tickets for the next day to Calientas, so we had to fly out that day. After an hour of stressing out and trying to explain to a non-english speaking customer service rep that we wanted our money back so we could fly on another airline, we were able to get on LAN just 45 minutes after our original flight. One good thing...I found this great candy called Britt that is dark chocolate covered passion fruit...I am bringing some home for you all.

Once we got into Cusco we met up with Tait and Phong again, they had been in Cusco for about 5 hours and were having a blast exploring the town. We decided to go have Alpaca steaks for dinner, which I am sure a lot of you are saying "no don't eat the cute cuddly Alpaca," but damn they were good. We were told none of them had a name or a mother, so you need not worry.

After a very delicious dinner we headed up to this treehouse that was in the woods on a hill (Tait and Phong found it earlier). It was padlocked closed so we had to climb the tree (fun for me). We played Oh Hell for a while and then started to hear some rustling in the bushes down below, then some snarling and barking. A pack of wild dogs had caught our scent or maybe heard us all yelling at Tait because he was screwing us over in the card game. Anyways, we all got really quiet and they seemed to leave. We played on for about another half hour and then I had to break up the fun because I don't have an apparatus that can relieve myself when my bladder is full. We all climbed down very gracefully and grabbed a couple of sticks just in case someone decided to come back to play. After walking as quietly as we could through the brush Phong saw something moving and started yelling at a huge german shephard to "get back" while throwing rocks at it. The dog was as mad as Lucy is when she sees a squirrel. He bared its teeth but decided to go get back-up. We decided to run and scale a freakin 20 foot wall to safety (all while trying to avoid the cops that kept driving by). Just another exciting Donelson family adventure (Tait always knows how to find some action:).