Zachery: We have left Cusco, arrived Lima then flew straight to Iquitos. We got into a small bus and arrived at our destination. I was a little shocked, a lot of gas, smoke, with a mix of a lot of people and car traffic everywhere. Wow, it's very busy. What's different about all this is that there aren't any glass on the windows. Everything is open! Also there are motorcycles and scooters (pointing) and motocarros (the bikes with the carriages). We are looking forward to tomorrow. We will have some free time and have a tour around town.
Caldonia: This is the plaza. We saw Deaf people at the center! Wow!
Amberley: Hey! Just looking around.
Rosenda: Hi!
(Gary, the students and local Deaf people communicating in a blend of Peruvian Sign Language and gestures. Jen's amateur translation: The football stadium and the volleyball arena are over there. The church is also right down that road. There's a square there. )
Joi, Zachery, Rosenda and Amberley getting off the plane when we landed at Iquitos.
Rosenda: Hello. This is the train to Cusco. Today, all day, what did we do? Nothing much. We went to a small plaza and (saw a statue of) the Inca king who built Machu Picchu. (Jen's note: His name is Pachacuti. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachacuti. Wikipedia has the exact same picture of the statue where the group picture was taken: see below). Then we separated and shopped and did whatever we wanted/needed. We met at the hotel again, went to the train station and did some homework and passed the time. Now we're on the train. Tomorrow we fly out to Iquitos (the Amazon area). That's all. Bye.
Group picture of us with the statue of Pachacuti. Teachers! Take note! Michael IS doing his homework! :) The train made a quick stop along the way and the woman came by to sell her flowers. Beautiful flowers!
Caldonia: All of us woke up early in the morning and ate breakfast. Freddy, our guide met us and we went together to the bus. We were really excited and went on a winding road. It was hard to see because it was very cloudy and rainy. When we arrived, we felt curious. What would Machu Picchu look like? We showed our passport and tickets then entered. Freddy started signing.. no, I mean writing and speaking, explaining to us about the geography and what everything looks like. He showed us the moon flower, and how they (the Incans) used this to sacrifice women. There are three symbols that are always shown: 1) River for snakes, 2) Puma for life/Earth, 3) Condor for the afterlife/the dead. You can always see the three symbols across the area.
Then, we went to see the four temples. 1) Temple of Sun, 2) Temple of Wind, 3) Temple of Water and 4) Temple of Earth. The explanation of all the buildings in the area was interesting. They were all built differently. One group of buildings is very architecturally sound. All the blocks fit each other very well and in a very neat way. Those are the temples. The others are more rugged and those are the homes, houses where people live. They used grass on their roofs to camouflage the buildings. Those kinds of roof also helped smoke to escape the buildings when they were cooking so that the smoke did not get stuck in the buildings.
We saw so many things. It rained and rained and we went back to the entrance. At the entrance, we started our hike up the mountain. Wow, we were so tired and extremely out of breath! Some of us started to ask ourselves why we decided to go on the hike, why did we decide to walk up? We stuck it out and thought positively. Some of the steps were very narrow, and some of them had very steep drop offs on the side. The steps were uneven, rocky and it was hard. We went all the way and finally arrived at our destination. We felt so good- we had accomplished something! We took pictures and it finally became sunny. We could see everything much better than when it was rainy and cloudy. We went back down and it was really slippery. I ended up slipping down and slamming my finger (Jen's note: See Caldonia's finger!!) When we arrived at the bottom, we took more pictures because it was sunnier and we could see everything more clearly than when we first got there.
After that, we had some free time. Many of us went to bed early! That's it J
The entrance to Machu Picchu. It was raining and very cool. You can almost see nothing in the background (all white!)
The students are walking on the stairs and exploring Machu Picchu.
The Sundial. It was used by the Incas in the 1400s and 1500s. Unfortunately, a commercial was made there and the crane broke. This left a huge chip and the Sundial is no longer working.
Another group picture before we went hiking up the Machu Picchu mountain. It was just starting to clear up.
Joi walking up the stairs. The hike took us 2.5 hours roundtrip.
The best group picture of us! You can see Machu Picchu in the background. We climbed 2000 feet.
