Eating Cuy and Other Adventures of a Gringa in Peru: Photos!!!

Here are a few photos from my adventures thus far. And I´m starting at the very begining...

Self portrait of me hanging out at the Mexico City airport for five hours before jumping on the plane for a six hour flight Lima. Note to anyone going to Lima... Florida is directly north of S. America so go that route. The extra hours of flying from Mexico are not worth saving a hundred dollars round trip. Geography never was my strong suit...

Ricardo, Iris´brother who lives in Santipo, picked me up from the Lima airport on July 2. It was about 1am by the time I got out of immigration and custums. Good times. Anyway, this photo is of us having breakfast my first morning in Lima. He also kindly road with me on the six hour bus ride from Lima to Huancayo. He taught me quite a bit of Spanish on that trip plus I was excited to hear about his life in Santipo. He has a PhD in economics and a masters in political science and is currently in the cocoa (as in chocolate not cocaine) export business.

Lima... I promise there are absolutely gorgeous parts of Lima too, I just didn´t get a picture of it.

Beautiful scenery on my way from Lima to Huancayo.

Today I traveled up to Torre Torre, a collection of unsual rock formations that lie on the outskirts of Huancayo. This is a picture looking down on the city of Huancayo.

The rock formations in the distance is Torre Torre. The climb up to the spot reminded me of my hike with Chrissy at Torre Pines in San Diego last year... although this was a little more strenuous. I don´t know if it was the altitude or my atrophying muscles but it was a little rough and I was huffing and puffing the whole way. On the Paige and David rock climbing scale, I´d give this one a 5.10... I mean seriously, it was hard.

A couple of the towers. Iris´niece who snuck into the picture in the lower right hand corner, was nice enough to accompany me on my travels today.