Machu Picchu

Where do I start. Hmmm well as we´re traveling with now 5 other artensanos, our plans have been delayed...only to be delayed and delayed again, which turned out wasn´t so bad because I got sick again! I´ve been eating basically only fruit for the past few days until recently when I dared to eat meat and started feeling better. Its a gamble, do I want to feel really sick to the stomach... or really really weak from eating pears for days on end. But anyway hopefully that was the end of the sickyness. So we spent a few more days hanging out playing guitar in Cuzco, and then a crazy crazy day traveling here to Machu Picchu. It was beautiful and spectacular and awful.
We took the long crazy nuts cheap way through little towns perched on the cliffs of the Andes. Vertical farms, waterfall crossings, four meter wide roads under construction, backing up on the four meter wide road to let other busses pass kind of nuts. So that was all day. But then we got here and it felt so wonderful to be in the woods again and I can´t really imagine a more beautiful woods to be in. We walked about an hour along the train tracks towards the town, Aguas Calientes but ended up staying in a hostal along the way because I was feeling really really sick and weak and awful. Our friends had gone ahead at that point and we were walking with a Canadian girl who had been a year studying in Equador.
The next day we slept in and went to go look for our people and miraculously found them camped out by the river. The river has these huge huge white rocks all through it and a strong current. The places where it becomes waterfalls are beautiful and the mountains behind in contrast is quite a sight. So yeah we just sat around relaxing on the main plaza, drinking mate, playing cards, meeting a whole bunch of other travelers. This was yesterday...but it seems like longer ago... So last night there was a huge celebration in the town for the virgin Carmen? I think? It wasn´t too clear but there was dancing and really loud brass bands through the night...and this morning...and right now... Yessirree so we´re going to camp out tonight and head up to Machu Picchu early tomorrow morning, and make our way back to Cuzco tomorrow night. Then we´ll head down to the Atacama desert in Chile and then back to Cordoba! And then home!! Our goal is to arrive in Cordoba on the 25th and we´ll stay a few days on our friends ranch (with horses!) in the countryside, a few days with Cristina and the family in Cordoba and then fly back on the 31st! Oh yeah and there are banana, avacado, and papaya trees that you can pick fruit off of and eat! Whenever you want! For freee!!! Oh and Machu Picchu means big mountain.