What an amazing trip!  From Tupiza, Bolivia to Lake Titicaca to Cusco to Machu Picchu and many places in between, this was definitely one of my favorite trips that I have taken.  I learned a lot about myself, what I'm looking for out of life, and much more.  The trip ended on a great note, as I met up with friends that I hadn't seen in over a year.  We met up in Lima and then went onward to Cusco.  In Cusco, we checked out some of the ruins in the surrounding area and in the Sacred Valley.  To check out the Sacred Valley, we hired a driver for the day.  Francisco was our man.  He was pretty funny and gave us a great day to check out Pisac, Ollantaytambo, Chinchero, and Moray.  His deal was that if he didn't get us to all those places then we didn't have to pay him.  That resulted in us taking a few shortcuts to get to the different sights on time.  One of the shortcuts he had never taken before.  We crossed a rickety old wooden bridge.  He paused several times to bless himself just incase the bridge decided to give way.  The road that it opened up to was incredible.  The sun was setting and hitting the valley and the snow capped peaks at just the right angle.  At one point we hit a traffic jam of locals with their sheep herd.  All the sights were stunning, but our favorite was Moray because we hit it at the perfect time of day and we had it to ourselves.  


The Inca Trail itself was an interesting experience.  The first two days I was thinking that it wasn't near as hard as I had heard and read about.  Then . . .  came the sickness.  It was by far and away the worst that I have ever felt in my life.  I'm relatively certain it was something that I had eaten.  That night was a pretty painful night that led into a 5:30 wake up (it didn't matter because I couldn't sleep anyway) to get ready for the day's 10 hour hike.  Twelve of the the thirteen people ended up getting sick throughout that night.  Miraculously, everyone dug down deep and made it up to Machu Picchu.  Looking back on it, it was all well worth it.  I would do it again in a heartbeat.  It astounds me how much punishment the human body can take.


Spending time with my friends was really great.  It was hard to leave.  I am really grateful to them for coming down and sharing in some amazing experiences.  I am also grateful for their long standing friendship.  


Here are a few of the pictures along the way and some videos that I've created.  All of them except one of them can be viewed in HD.