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The Sacred Valley
In this blog I will be talking about my experience in the Sacred Valley. I will be talking about Machu Picchu and all of the little towns in the Sacred Valley.

Pisac

The start of the Sacred Valley was in Pisac. It was a very small town, and a bit too touristy to for our liking. Apparently we were staying in the Beverly Hills of Pisac according to some local travelers. It was a pretty nice place, we got free breakfast, and the breakfast was actually quite good. Get this it was made by only one chef.

My favourite restaurant in Pisac was called Ulrike’s. They served a Menú, oh and by the way a menú is a lunch thing where you can get a starter, a second and sometimes a dessert. I thought that this was a pretty good deal, because if you got a normal main dish it would be more than the menú.

There were some scary things about the house. One was that there were some scorpions that were around two centimetres long and they frightened my sister so much that she didn’t want to sleep in the bed near where the scorpion was.

During the stay in Pisac we met a lovely Canadian fellow named Mike. We bumped into him quite a few times because Pisac is such a small town. Pisac was just an ok town for me at least, it was quite expensive and there were toooooooooo many tourists.

Urubamba

When we first arrived in Urubamba I thought that it would be a small town, only a little but bigger than Pisac. I didn’t find out what it looked like until the next day because our family was so tired that we didn’t feel like walking into town on the first day.

When we got to our accommodation, there was a dog than ran up to us and sniffed us. You know I’m a dog lover so I was obviously petting it. His name was Bagel, (he was a beagle). He was a pretty cute dog, really strong so when he jumped up on you, you would practically get knocked over.

Our house was really nice, the owner’s house was around three times the size of our cottage. They even had a swimming pool. It was so cold that my sister and I had to wear our wet suits in the pool. Even when we wore or wet suits it would still be cold. I liked it the most when it was a sunny day so I would dry pretty quickly.

One of the nights they invited us over for wine. My sister and I weren’t allowed to have wine, but I wish I was allowed to have beer. It tastes like apple juice for me. I can’t wait until I’m eighteen and I’m allowed to drink beer.

Cusco

The first impression of Cusco wasn’t great, it seemed like a huge town with a lot of space. When I say big I mean big in space wise. Also our apartment wasn’t the greatest, it literally froze my legs off. It is also really tucked away into the building.

After being there my dad made a decision with the family about going back to Cuenca for three weeks. We were going to stay in Cusco for the full six weeks but when we saw the apartment and the city we decided to eventually go back to Cuenca for three weeks and stay in Cusco for the other three weeks. My mom said and I think that it’s true, that we haven’t given Cusco much of chance. We had only stayed there for two nights.

Hikes that we’ve done

I can’t name all of the hikes that we’ve done but I will try to name some of them. Well let’s start with the Chupani Ruins hike. It was the longest one. It was around seven and a half hours including breaks. One of the things that was exciting about the hike was that we did it with a group. One of the guys in the group was really nice and taught my sister and I about how the Incas grew their potatoes. At the top of the hike we had some great views of the valley. Our main guide said that another 2 days further there is a town. She explained how much she wanted to do that trek. The hike was twenty kilometres starting from our house in Urubamba.

The only other hike that I remember clearly was the waterfall and the ruins of Perolniyoc. I know it’s hard to say, I can’t even say it. In total it was about 4 to 5 hours. The reason it was hard is because it was all uphill and then all downhill. Hard on one part of the legs at one time, and hard on the other part of the leg at the other time. You should have seen the view at the top of the ruins. You couldn’t see any towns but it was still really amazing. This hike was also long to0, it was around seventeen to eighteen kilometres. There are a bunch of other hikes but I forget most of the details of them.

Some things that I miss…

Here are some things that I miss other than my family and my friends.

First thing that I miss is Cheerios, if you don’t know what Cheerios are, well they are a type of cereal. I really miss them because most of the times after soccer I would come home and have a pretty big bowl of Cheerios.

I also really miss the milk at home. Here I don’t like having just a plain glass of it. It is only ok when there is some cereal with the milk.

The last food that I miss is the bread at home (It’s called Good Haven), I’m pretty sure that it is called good haven bread. Pretty much every morning I have a peanut butter sandwich with jam and that type of bread.

Actually there are two more things. They are peanut butter and ketchup.

Well the peanut butter here is not natural. Sorry there is natural but it is quite a bit more expensive. It’s weird because you can buy peanuts for pretty cheap but natural peanut butter is really expensive. It’s sad because we now have to buy treat peanut butter. I like the taste of treat peanut butter but it gets old. However natural peanut butter doesn’t get old.

Oh ya! I forgot, ketchup is the other one. It’s not as bad here but in Cuenca it was the sweetest type of ketchup I have ever had. I know what you’re going to say. “The ketchup here is sweet”, no, no, no, no, not even as close in sweetness as in Cuenca. The ketchup in Perú and in Bolivia is not as bad but still sweeter than Calgary or wherever you people live. Well those are the foods that I miss.

Mi experiencia en general del Valle Sagrado

El Valle Sagrado es uno de los momentos más buenos de tú vida. Puedes ver muchísimas cosas que no puedes ver en otras partes del mundo.

Unas partes cuando no quieres levantar de tú cama, pero necesitas. Esas partes son de todas las días de tú vida.

Algunas de las partes que me gustaban eran que esta en las montañas toda el tiempo, puede tener un fuego en la casa. Hay muchísimas cosas pero no puedo mencionar todos.

Cuando estábamos manejando yo pude ver las comunidades en las partes altas de las montañas. Me preguntaba cómo sería vivir en esas comunidades. Pienso que no tienen agua corriendo, ni electricidad, pero todavía están felices.

Chau Jasper

 

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In this blog I will be talking about Perú so far, my experiences, my thoughts, where we’ve been, and finally what we’ve been doing for the last three weeks.

Lima
When I first arrived in Lima, on December 21st, I was sooo excited because I knew that we were going to be in Perú for the next month and a bit. I was really tired on the drive to our apartment because that day we had already driven three and a half hours to get to Guayaquil. After we got to Guayaquil we took an hour long flight to get to Lima.

When we got to our apartment, I felt too tired to even unpack, but I still had to. Our apartment was around two blocks from the beach. My parents said that we couldn’t go into the water because after Lima we would be going to a beach town for Christmas. We still got some nice walks along the beach. We were allowed to throw rocks in, not when somebody was straight in front of us though. My sister and I built big rock mountains so when a wave came we could stand on top of the mountain and laugh at the wave because it wouldn’t be able to touch us because we were too high.

Lima is one of the more civilized cities in South America. It has a little bit over ten million people, it is also one of the rich cities in South America. You would still see beggars though. It was really expensive, you couldn’t get a meal for less than seventy five soles for the whole family, which is about thirty Canadian dollars.

The apartment itself was pretty nice, the area that we were in was really nice, one of the nicer neighbourhoods in Lima. I wouldn’t go back to Lima again, only if I had to. It was neat to see a really big city like that though.

Huanchaco
Huanchaco es un lugar muy pequeño cerca del ciudad de Trujillo. Huanchaco es en la costa oeste al lado del Océano Pacífico. Nos estábamos quedando en una Casa Naranja. Esa casa fue casi el casa más grande de todo Huanchaco.

Tiene una terraza que cuando el atardecer se acabo fue muy bonito. Casi todos los días fuimos a la playa, en la play hacemos “bodyboarding”. Fue muy divertido cuando mi padre vino conmigo porque el me empujó cuando una ola estaba viendo y yo cabalgué la ola. Todo el tiempo mi mama queda en la playa, estaba mirándonos porqué ella no le gusta agua fría. Yo estaba triste porque mama no venía conmigo.

A lot of the nights in Huanchaco we would go to the bakery on the corner of our street and buy a piece of pie. After we would buy the piece of pie we would go back to the house and maybe watch a couple of episodes of Friends, or watch a movie. The owners of the place lived at the house too. The house is basically like an apartment with three floors. We were staying on the second floor, and the owners were staying on the third floor. The owners’ names were Robby and Gina. They said that there were going to be other people staying on the first floor for a little bit of time while we were saying there too.

One of the days that we were there my sister and I ran along a beach that was sandy. We liked this beach because most of the other beaches were rocky. My sister and I would run really fast, at least that’s what it felt like. When a wave would come we would run even faster and try to dodge the wave. Sometimes when I ran, it felt like I was as fast as Usain Bolt. I knew I wasn’t, but it felt like it.

Christmas and New Year
Navidad fue un poquito diferente, porque no tuvimos nuestra familia. No tuvimos un árbol muy grande ni decoraciones. En la mañana del día de navidad mis padres dijeron que Papá Noel no pudo venir. Por eso ellos compraron un poquito de regalos para mi hermana y yo. Los regalos son los mismos que los en el calceta. Yo estaba feliz porque tuvimos un poquito de regalos. Fue una navidad diferente y un poquito triste.

New Years
New Years was a bit different than I thought it would be. The day before New Years it was really busy as people from the bigger city called Trujillo came to the beach. That night people partied from around 5pm to 7am the next day. When my parents woke up they said that they saw people drinking beer and snogging at 7:30am on the corner of the street. It was quite a bit busier in Huanchaco than I thought it would be.

Estoy enamorado para ir a La Valle Sagrado. Vamos a quedar en la Valle Sagrado para tres semanas. Yo e tenido un tiempo muy divertido en Lima y en el pueblito Huanchaco.

Gracias, Jasper