Some of us woke up early today, some of us didn’t. I think that Eryn and I qualify to be in the last category, and my parents qualify to be in the first. Well, we woke up this morning and got out of bed, walked downstairs and put some food into our stomachs, and then continued with our tasks of getting ready to go. At 8 o’clock, we were at the post office and got into a car and drove away. And so ended our time in Fes.

We arrived at Meknes an hour later, and the first thing that we did was look at the city from a panoramic location. We then got into the car and drove to a granary and stable that housed 12000 horses at once. That is a lot of poop. They then used the poop to fertilize the ground around Meknes. We then went to a mausoleum, and then walked into the old medina of Meknes. In the medina, we went to a bakery and watched people for a while, while eating pastries, before going to the car and leaving. And so ended our time in Meknes.

We then drove in the car with our driver to Moulay-Idriss, the oldest city in Morocco. There, we walked up to a panoramic location before walking down to see a mosque, where our driver prayed. When he finished, we walked out, but on the way I bought a hunk of nougat. It was good and sugary when we ate it. And so ended our time in Moulay-Idriss.

We then drove to Volubilis, where there are some ancient Roman ruins. There was a poor section and a wealthy section, and on the floors of both parts’ dining rooms, there were beautiful mosaics of Roman gods and heroes. We took a guide and toured around; walking through and around the Triumphal Arch and standing on the edge of a baptistery. When we finally finished two hours later, we had seen and heard a lot. And so ended our time in Volubilis.

That’s all for now, Folks!

Football, in this case, is what Americans call soccer. I went outside our traditional house today and played football with some guys. There were also sometimes girls, but they squealed, and that was about all they did.

At the beginning, there was a guy that was older and had a California University Class of 1989 shirt on, but after a bit of playing he left. About the time that he left, another guy about my age came and played on my team that had been subtracted from with the loss of the guy that I first mentioned. This new guy played or a while, and then he went to his house and get two baby chickens and we played with them for a while.

When this friend went to return the chicks, we found a kid a bit younger than me passed out in a dark alleyway. We notified the restaurant next door and they attempted to revive him as we left to go play, with the accoutrement of another guy a bit older than me. We played with him for a while before my second friend left, and then the newest guy named Mohammad and I, along with a few others, worked on our goalie skills. Then I went inside and the group dissipated.

That’s all for now, Folks!

Well, for the first time in all of Morocco, I think, we saw a dog. As mentioned in the previous posts, the Islamic religion forbids the use of dogs as pets, and that is the main reason for getting feral dogs. Today we saw the first one, and it was sleeping.

I have mentioned to my father that in Morocco, it seems as though cats and dogs have switched places; cats are active and ubiquitous, while dogs are practically nonexistent, and when seen, are seen sleeping in the sun, as we saw today. We saw that dog while walking on a tour with Eryn as our guide. We saw a synagogue door, a palace gate, a courtyard, a market, and more gates as required by the tour.

We are starting to be orientated on our walkings around Fez, and hope to get better as time goes by.

That’s all for now, Folks!

Maybe full cloud. And raining. Today was a fairly miserable day, going on a tour and finding everything as far as the eye can see wet. Luckily, it cleared up eventually, but we still had gotten wet, even through our rain coats.

We went to the Medersa near our place again, and then went down through the markets to a wood museum, but didn’t go inside, because we were on a tight schedule. We kept going for a while before finally arriving at the tannery. We looked down from a lookout tower and saw vat upon vat of multi-colored liquid, from yellow to brown. We also so a white-ish liquid that is made of limestone and water to get the wool and fur off the skins.

The whole tannery smelled different because the tanners use pigeon droppings for their tanning, as it is not toxic, as other things are. The finished product doesn’t smell at all. Which is good. We did not get anything at the tannery, but who knows, we might yet.

That included some of our walking tour today with a guide.

That’s all for now, Folks!

That is what we hoped for today, but, contrary to our wishes, the rain came and came, pouring in through cracks in the ceiling and getting everything that shouldn’t get damp, damp. At least none of the electronics got wet.

However, with the rain, cold poured in, emanating off of the rain droplets and surrounding us in our quandaries and work. In the end, we just put coats on to fight the chill and settled down, huddling in the bottom of our chairs and conserving heat. The rain I think has ended now, but, luckily, we were always inside whenever there was an exceptionally bad deluge.

That is what happened today, hindering our progress in exploring the wondrous Ancient Medina of Fez. Maybe if it had been sunny, we could have seen some more coppersmiths pound away at their work.

That’s all for now, Folks!

A Medersa is a school of Islamic learning. In Christianity, it might be called seminary. In Pakistan, they are called Madrasas. There are several in the Ancient Medina of Fez, and today we went to one of them. The following are memories that I have of the Medersa.

The ceramics are detailed, colorful, and geometrical. They adorn the lower walls all around the courtyard, adding color and life to the school. There are also cedar partitions that surround most of the open spaces, rendering it hard to see through, but allowing light to shine through. There was also a lot of stucco that has been carved so that, if the arches fell on someone, it would be a most painful death, being pierced dozens of times and having the weight of a roof on top of you.

Another interesting thing about Fez is that it is cat heaven. Though they may not get the pick of fish from fish vendors on the street, they generally rule the city, causing no mischief and generally having the right of way.

That’s all for now, Folks!

..do as the Fezians (?) do. I am not sure what that means exactly. Maybe it means knowing where you are in the middle of the mazes in the Ancient Medina. Maybe it means sitting behind desks trying to sell things, or maybe it means living in Fes.

At the moment we have only achieved the last one, and for that I am happy. It is fun getting lost on the confusing little streets. I guess that is why there are maps. It is also fun to talk. Everyone wants to know where you are from, what your name is, and if you would like to buy anything.  Knowing the streets is something that takes time and patience. We might have time, but mostly, we stay on the main street going down the center of the medina, housing the market.

Today we walked down the main street. After walking for a ways, we came upon the central market. We looked around at men banging copper pots with hammers and stuff like that before going on a tour at a brass lantern factory. The copper got taped with a pattern, and then a practiced artisan would cut the pattern with a coping saw. Then another man would use hammer and a pointed bit to add texture, before someone else put all the pieces together and formed some sort of lamp.

That’s all for now, Folks!

Our casa in Fez is large and different. We arrived at the casa after a 2 hour train ride from Casablanca. When we arrived, we got into the car of a guy that had held a sign with my father’s name on it before arriving in the old Medina from 789, AD. We then piled our stuff into the cart of a man and went off. He took us down the wrong street, but eventually got it correct and took us to our place. The old Medina has a maze of twisty little passages, like the streets and alleyways in Venice.

The casa is tall. When walking in the unassuming door, you see a bench with three round cloth pillows on it and a doorway off to the right. You walk through that doorway and see curtains off to the left and push your way through them and arrive in a courtyard with lit-up lanterns in the corners, and stairs off to the left. To the right, there is a doorway; to the left is a kitchen and to the right is a bathroom. Also in the courtyard is a table with 6 chairs. To the end is a living room area, and to the right from the courtyard is a small sitting area.

Up the stairs, there is a left and a right fork. To the left are my sister’s room and a balcony with a half-bath to the end. To the right of that fork is my parents’ room with en-suite full bath. Up the stairs again, you get to another fork. To the left is my room of two twin beds and to the right is a door. Sliding open the deadbolts and taking the key, one would walk out onto the roof and have the choice of sliding open the glass roof for the courtyard, and a kitchen is straight ahead, using the key to get through the padlock. Going up a set of metal chairs, you arrive on a small balcony that has no furnishings of any kind and only foot-high railing.

That’s all for now, Folks!

Alliteration, how interesting is that? It is not very interesting because a lot of people can do alliteration with any letter. Although ‘x’ would be hard to do, all of that making my title sentence not very memorable in the end. However, we did go to a mosque today and we did hear about a myth and it was morning and it might be memorable.

The mosque was the Mosque Hassan II that was built only twenty years ago. It is a mosque that extends out over the sea, and some guidebooks might say that there is even a glass floor that you can look through to the sea. There isn’t. As it turns out, the builders used regular building techniques to build the columns in the ocean, and then had to fix their mistake, as salt water erodes things a whole lot faster than air. In the end, though, it has turned into a fairly spectacular building.

The pillars on the inside are concrete coated in marble, along with the floor. The glass chandeliers were imported from Venice, and there is local stucco to make the elaborate arches. The women’s prayer balconies above are made of locally cut cedar trees. Underneath, there is an ablutions room where men wash in fountains, there is another somewhere else for women.

Another myth that might be mentioned is my father’s Chicken Myth from the golden arches, our first time eating there. Ever.

That’s all for now, Folks!

Leaving in the morning,

On an okay plane,

Leave Peru with Mourning,

Silently to stay sane.

In Panama get out,

Get through the TSA,

To Newark without doubt,

In the states, you don’t say?

Climbing back through a gate,

And sitting in our seats,

Hoping we won’t be late,

More than the eye will meet.

In Lisbon out we climb,

From a gate that is prime, (41)

Now on a tiny plane,

Flying over the sea,

Going away from Spain,

Now in Morocco, you see?

That’s all for now, Folks!

Alliteration, as always, answers few questions. I imagine interesting things would happen if someone used alliteration to answer annoying askings, as an animal attacks.  Lima is a big city, crossing the city can cause crashes and collisions concerning careening cars. To stop alliteration, I will tell people more about the city of our residence for the next 5 hours.

The city is on the western side of the continent of South America, on the Pacific coast, and is on a peninsula jutting out into the sea. It is a large commercial and industrial city that has fishing boats and cargo boats cruising around its harbor, looking for anchorage so they can unload their cargo of fish or freight containers. Lima is accessible by all means of transportation except for rocket ships, maybe. We arrived and are leaving via the rather large and ostentatious airport.

That’s all for now, Folks!

For those of you who are not up-to-snuff on your Greek mythology, Hermes is the god of travel, the road, merchants, messengers, and other sorts of things. Today we saw a bank truck that was probably full of money in the middle of Lima with the name of Hermes. I pointed out to my family that, ironically, Hermes is also the god of thieves.

Interesting.

Last night, after some time and debating, we decided to move to a different place to stay the night because of the brown stuff on the floor of our rooms and so went a couple of yards down the street to a more salubrious hotel. We spent the night and morning there, finally leaving at 11 o’clock AM.

We went to the airport in a taxi, checked in, went through security, and then got on our flight at about 12:30. We flew for about an hour and a half before landing in Lima. We got into a van and drove to our hotel, where we stepped into a VERY salubrious room. We later went to the store to get some things for dinner before coming back to the room, and on the way seeing the bank truck.

That’s all for now, Folks!

My father has just told me not to complain about how he didn’t get me a hostel with a pool because of all of the cesspool in the main lobby. The reason for that is because of all of the rain that fell down tonight and burst the sewage system, showering the rooms with, er, things that we thought we had left behind.

We woke up this morning and had a regular morning, going to the Meeting Place Café for breakfast. When we finished with our game of Scrabble and our waffles, we left and went back to the hostel. We did stuff that we usually do on a down day; schoolwork, reading, deleting pictures, and other things. We finished up with that late in the day and went down for ice cream and pastries, including apple pie, before coming back and deleting more pictures.

We finally went to dinner and ate soup and pasta, along with a virgin strawberry daiquiri and water before coming back to our hostel. My sister was in the bathroom when suddenly I heard her hammering at the door screaming,

“HELP!!!”

I opened the door and she rushed out, quickly being pursued by the mad liquids and solids of the toilet system. The toilets bubbled, the showers squirted, and the floor drains regurgitated all that ever went in. In other words, it turned into a wet, brown mess that everyone wanted to avoid. Sadly for the hostel, the only person there was the receptionist, and his place was soon buried in a foot of water from everywhere else, ruining the computer.

Now, a bunch of people in the hall are hurriedly taking bucketsful of the stuff out to the street and letting it run away. We are wondering how we will go to the bathroom and how to sleep.

That’s all for now, Folks!

…let the caiman do it. That was Reve’s favorite line to say during our time in the Amazon basin. He said that a lot whenever we were getting out of the boat and it was muddy outside, which was most of the time. Our cook during the trip had the name of Palta, or avocado in English, which was sometimes lengthened to Paltacha. I am not sure if that is a sobriquet or something, but it is what everyone called him.

The boat driver had the same name as his son that accompanied us on our trip. The captain got up before us and went to bed before us, but never got to sleep in the boat. I think that the sun was only along for the ride, and he usually sat behind the tarp-covered luggage on the floor. The boat helper’s name was Jonathan and he was the one that tied up the boat, pushed it from the docks, and did other such things.

Those were the main staff and helpers of the trip in the Amazon, and today we left. We started this morning in the boat and went 3 hours downriver. From there, we got into two different taxis and drove to another river, crossed that, and arrived again at the SuperVan. We drove for hours and hours in that before arriving in Cusco again.

That’s all for now, Folks!

I look out from my nest of branches in the Amazonian rain forest and understand for the umpteenth time why it is called the rain forest; it rains a lot. I am the Red-and-Green Macaw that everyone wants to see during their time in the Amazon. I am waiting for the rain to clear up-if it will-so that I can go out over the water and a hide to eat some clay.

The reason that we as macaws need to eat clay is that 80% of our diet is made up of unripe fruit nuts, and the trees have developed a grudge against us and have put poisons in the fruit so that we should die from eating, but we don’t because we eat clay always before we eat the unripe fruit.

Finally, after all of my cogitations, it is starting to clear up. The rain clouds are moving away and I feel like eating clay. When I get to the clay lick, I am one of the first ones there, so I sit on top of a bamboo stick and wait for something to happen. Eventually, it does, and all of us fly back and forth to see if anything is hiding. When we think it is safe, I am the first one down at the lick, eating. As soon as my two friends start to join me, a vulture flies over and we all fly away. Oh, well, at least I got some clay.

That’s all for now, Folks!

…almost. The reason for that was because he might have fallen into a stream that was across the path that we were taking through the rain forest near his father’s house on our way to a clay lick that attracts tapirs and other animals to drink, snort, and bathe in the mineral rich soil. All of that, however, was after a day full of boating and other activities that mainly focused around the water.

We had an early start this morning to be ready to leave in the boat at five from the place where we had been staying for two nights. We all clambered into the blue, aluminum boat and drove downriver towards Hummingbird Lodge and the Madre de Dios river, where we had started  a couple of days prior. At first we looked for jaguars, scanning the banks with alert eyes for the flash of a twitching tail or the sight of a jaguar sun-bathing on a log. However, when it started to rain, we pulled out the tarp and hid underneath it and went to sleep, stopping at the ranger station on the way out of the park.

We finally got out of the Rio Manu, and went along the Madre de Dios River until we arrived at the town of Boca Manu, where we got some more gasoline for the boat that was almost out of the fuel. We then stopped again at Hummingbird Lodge and ate our lunch before continuing on down the river, into the rain. When we got to Reve’s father’s house, we got all of our stuff out from underneath that tarp in the back and climbed up the stairs to our quarters. Eventually, we left on the walk that included the parcel in the first paragraph before arriving at the hide for the tapir lick and sleeping for a while before walking back to the lodge to eat and sleep.

That’s all for now, Folks!

When one gets stuck on the edge of a muddy banked river and has a machete, what one could do was hack away at the mud for a while until there was a nice set of stairs going up the bank so that the crew and passengers could do what they wanted to do. What we wanted to do in that situation was go on a walk to see an oxbow lake from a tour and to look at a large tree.

Once we could walk up the bank, we walked on a trail to the edge of the lake and then up, up, up the tower to the top and looked out over the lake or a while, seeing birds of various varieties before heading off down again. We stopped again at a lookout over the lake and admired the beauty of the Amazonian rain forest before going on to see the big tree.

When we finished with all of that, we drove back for half-an-hour in the boat to the camp, but the dining room lights wouldn’t work. Reve yelled at the resident natives for a while and they came back with a battery that worked just fine, and it all worked out.

That’s all for now, Folks!

Getting right up close to a caiman is interesting, especially in a small wooden boat. The caiman might bolt, attack, or just sit there, waiting for something to happen. The last option was what happened to us today as we sat in a lake after dark on a catamaran.

The catamaran was something like two canoes tied together with planks laid across the top, and in the back ends, the captain and his helper paddled with large paddles while we looked for caimans and otters. We eventually saw a family of 8 Giant River Otters from our boat before docking and relaxing for a while.  That family of otters is the same one that appears in Planet Earth, that our guide, Reve, helped film. After that, we piled back onto the boat in the dark and looked for caimans.

One caiman that we saw let us come right up to us, and we got some good pictures. When we finished with all of that, we got out of the catamaran and walked along the path back to the river and got into the boat to drive back to the new camp, where we will be staying for another night before heading down river.

That’s all for now, Folks!

There are only 100 days left on this trip, and we are doing some interesting things to spend those days. We are in the Amazon basin still, and have ridden a boat for most of the day. The title of today’s post is saying how tarantulas do not ever need vacation, as they live in interesting places like Columbia, Costa Rica, and most importantly: Peru.

We took a night walk tonight to use up some time, and saw 4 tarantulas of two different varieties. Averaged out, that would be two of each kind, but we saw three of one kind and one of another. The path that we were on wound its way around in the jungle, leaning around giant trees and weaving in between green thickets.

Our first tarantula was an all-black one that Reve teased out of its hole with a blade of grass. We saw another one of those before turning back, and on the way, we saw an orange and black one that never stayed long out of its hole. The final one was the child of the first one, and once we saw that, we went back to the lodge for another early start.

That’s all for now, Folks!

With rain, there comes mud. Not with the rain exactly, but the mud forms into its squelchy little self when rain falls from moisture in the air and wets the ground, causing it to be slippery, slimy, and sucking. On dirt roads, the rain and mud can cause mudslides, making the roads nearly or really impassable.

We rode on a road that was the former, not the latter, and were able to make it to where we are now to stay for the night. The place where we are now staying is called Bambu Lodge, built by a carpenter and his sons out of bamboo for guests that are on their way to the river. We are in the Amazon Basin, but have yet to get to any such thing as a port or dock protruding into the river that we have been following down a valley.

We left early this morning at about 5 am in a van made for at least 15 people that only had 8. At the first stop, we dropped off the uncle of our guide, Reve, at his house and then drove on. We drove past and walked though some pre-Incan burial grounds before eating breakfast on the road. We then continued on to the eastern equivalent of Ollantaytambo, before heading up to the pass. We stopped at the gate of Manu National Park but did not go in. From there we went downhill to where we are now, at about 730 meters above sea level. Tomorrow we finally get into the boat and on to the river.

That’s all for now, Folks!

Today was the day were we finally packed up everything into our backpacks and our small duffel bag to take down to the Amazon tomorrow morning. But first, there was an important thing to do before we left: go to the chocolate museum and make our own chocolate.

At the chocolate museum, we learned about the different stages of chocolate from bean to bar. There are three main different types of bean. Two are grown in South America, one in Africa. In Africa, the main producers are the Ivory Coast and Ghana, where there are a lot of beans grown. In South America, there is one type that is grown naturally and another that is a hybrid between the two grown in South America and Africa.

A tree usually has two seasons of harvest, one from October to March and another from June to August. The one from October to March is the larger one, averaging for about 100 pods per fully grown tree. In the other harvest season, there are only about 50 pods per tree.

The tree starts out in a shade covered nursery, growing about 8 inches tall before it is sold to tree farmers. The tree farmer should plant the tree under shade, preferably plantain or banana trees, and fertilize the plant. The plant will start producing fruit in about 2 or 3 years, but will reach full maturity at about 5 or 6 years of age. The plant needs to be tended to every week so that some fungi will not inhabit it and kill it off before it can produce any food.

After the beans get harvested, they are cut open and the white seeds are carried away to where they are dried in the sun and roasted. They then get but into bags and shipped away. The beans are eventually shelled and crushed, before getting mixed with milk powder and sugar to make the chocolate. Eventually, the chocolate gets heated at 40 degrees Celsius and then mixed and molded to form chocolate bars, which take 10 beans to make a 100g bar .

We then went to the factory to make ourselves some chocolate. We first roasted some beans in a clay pot before grinding them into a paste with mortar and pestle. We then used that paste to make several different kinds of drinks; an early Spanish hot chocolate and an early Mayan hot chocolate. The Mayan drink was a little bit spicy, but my favorite was definitely the Spanish hot chocolate.

We also learned that when the Spanish first got to the New World, they thought that the Mayan’s drink was too spicy and bitter. But when the Spanish took some of the beans home, the discovered how delectable the chocolate really is and made the first hot chocolate as we know it. They also kept the chocolate a secret from the rest of the Old World for 100 years!

Then the best part began: we got some warmed chocolate from a bowl and used a variety of molds and mix-ins to obtain chocolate. I got a mold for six chocolate bars and made each one different. There was one that had Brazil nuts, peanuts, and almonds ground up and there was another with peanut butter M&Ms with raisins. When we finished, we went back home for an hour to let the chocolate set. When we got it and tasted it, it was really, really good.

That’s all for now, Folks!

Pronounced ‘sexy woman,’ Saqsaywaman is an Incan fortress overlooking the Incan city of Cusco. We did not go into the fortress because of the admission cost, but we did climb up and see the white Christ that is lit up at night and overlooks the city.

It was a long ways up, and looking down over the city, we realized that the city ended very abruptly. There is the main square, a small suburb, and then…nothing. The rolling fields of green, separated from time to time with sprinklings of dark green trees, went on forever over and beside the hills that formed Cusco’s geographic location.

There were not very many terraces, so the hills were smoother, but some still grew quinoa and corn to supply the city and the farmers with food. We were impressed by how serene it was, even though, when we turned around, there were the sounds of the city; the car horns, the church bells, and the din of people speaking to each other.

We finally went down the hill with alacrity; being happy that we were not climbing up the flights and flights of stairs that wound their winding way higher and higher up the hill. We were lucky to have climbed up the hill in a valley, but were climbing down the hill on the middle of the face. Later, we had dinner at another organic restaurant, and my ravioli was scrumptious!

That’s all for now, Folks!

That is what we are hoping to see on our 7-day tour in the Amazon basin starting on Monday. We went to the office of the tour company this morning to be briefed on our physical fitness and to sign that we will not hold the company accountable if we get injured or killed.

Another thing that we did during our interview was try on rubber boots. When we finished with all of that, we went to the Plaza de Armas. From there, we went up the hill to our hostel and I worked on schoolwork for a long, long time before leaving for dinner.

We had a delicious dinner, and the staff was really nice and gave us a complimentary dessert, which was good. After that, we went to our hostel and bedded down for the night.

That’s all for now, Folks!

Breaking rocks is hard. We as modern day humans are still are astonished by how the Incas could put rocks together seamlessly without mortar to survive for hundreds of years. One of the methods of cutting the rock was pounding it with harder rocks, while another was drilling holes, putting in sticks, and then soaking the wood to make it expand and crack the rock.

The moved the rocks from the quarry 50 km away using wooden rollers to go across a river and up the hill. Using alpaca and straw ropes, the dragged the rocks up the ramps. There is a giant rock that is along the roadside, and giant tractors could not even budge it from its resting place in the ground.

We learned all of that from our guide for our half day tour today in Ollantaytambo (Olly).  When we left, we drove to Cusco and there we checked into our bed and bakery before going out for dinner in town. When we finished with that, we went to a bank and extracted some money from the depths of an ATM before heading back to our B&B.

That’s all for now, Folks!

Some people call the fountain in the ancient city of Machu Picchu the ‘Fountain of Eternal Life,’ but now, it is dirty and there is not enough oxygen in the water, so it is now the fountain of eternal diarrhea. We did not partake of that water, though we did see it a lot.

We left Aguas Calientes this morning and rode the bus up to Machu Picchu. At Machu Picchu, we immediately went across the city to the trailhead for Waynapicchu.  We walked up and down and then up some more, gripping the steel cables tightly when needed, before finally arriving at the top and seeing the view of Machu Picchu and the surrounding land.

By the time that we got back down to the bottom, it was time to go on our tour around the city. We went with 12 other people and learned about how the Incas worshiped the Spaniards when they arrived because they thought that they were gods, and then got slaughtered by the thousands. When the tour was finished, we went off by ourselves and looked at some viscachas and at how closely knit the rocks were.

When we were finished with all of that, we got back in the bus and rode back to AC, were we went to the train station to go back to Olly, where we are now.

That’s all for now, Folks!

We are in the town that is at the end of the Sacred Valley closest to Machu Picchu. Tomorrow is the day that we will go up to the ruined Inca town and see why they lived there and see some of their buildings. We are also going to go up Wayna Picchu, which is a large hill at one end of Machu Picchu and is the hill that has the Temple of the Sun on the top.

We are going to go to everything tomorrow, and we are now in Aguas Calientes. We met our guide tonight and talked to him about what we are going to do in the morning. We take the bus around 6:30 to the ruins and then go up Wayna Picchu between 7 and 8 am.

That’s all for now, Folks!

The real name of the town that we are now in is really long and complicated, but at least it starts with an ‘o.’ It is out between Cusco and Macchu Picchu, and so we are staying the night in preparation to leave in the morning for Aguas Calientes. Aguas Calientes is on the bottom of the bus route up to the Macchu Picchu area where we will go in two days’ time.

Ollie is a town in the Sacred Valley that has hills with ruins surrounding it. Today, we climbed up one of the hills to see some granaries and to look out over our town. It looks like an ear of corn with the roofs that have exactly the same pattern of reddish-brown shingles that overlap each other. The town is very small and we have walked across it several times.

When we left the hill with granaries, we went over to the bottom of the hill with the Temple of the Sun but didn’t go up because of the admission costs. At the bottom, we saw a really small kitten on some steps and declined to pay some men in traditional dress for their services of standing in front of our camera lens. Later, after we went to dinner, we got some giant brownies and came back to our lodge for the night.

That’s all for now, Folks!

Today we said good-bye to our kind and generous benefactor, the man of the apartment, the Dr. Gooey.  He left this evening with his heavy suitcases and backpack on a taxi towards the airport. This is the last that we will see of him for at least 3½ months. We spent our last day with him going around town and into it to buy some things that were needed and not.

When we woke up this morning, we all ate breakfast and then my mother, Dr. Gooey, and I went into town and went to some local shops where my mother bought something for the table and I bought a drawing pad. We then went back to the apartment, but on the way went to a supermarket and mall to see some ice cream.

When we got back to the apartment, we puttered around for a little while before going to the ice cream shop that my mother and I had scouted out. When we finished with that, we went over to the shops and bought nothing before leaving the mall for real. When we left, we went back to the apartment, and later we went to a restaurant for dinner before saying goodbye to Uncle Richard.

That’s all for now, Folks!

Though we did not meet a guy named Tom tonight, we did tell some riddles to one another in the aspiration to get the other’s brain cells to work harder. I was the main one asking questions, though several times in during dinner my father did mention the ‘What is in my pocketses?’ riddle. We did not, however, ever ask that riddle because it was not actually a riddle, just a simple guessing game where some creatures in dark mines know not of what you are speaking.
We did all of that in an Italian restaurant that was overlooking a busy street and on top of a casino. Before that, we had done several things. We left the apartment this morning and went out to a monestary where there was a large, nice, low-light library with a lot of sheepskin bound books. After we had looked around that, we went downstairs and looked at the stuffed birds and such from the Amazon and saw a lot of clay jars. When we finished, we left the monestary and the workers locked the door behind us. From there, we went over to the market where there was everything from chicken feet to flowers to linens. There was also meat of every variety. We then left and did a tour of the cathedral. Among other things, the large bell in the left tower was 5 tons in weight and it took two men to swing the clapper.
After that, we went to Creppisimo, a crepe shop, and ate some crepes. Eventually, we left, and went back to the apartment for some naps. We did some things and took naps before deciding to go out and go to the Italian restaurant. When we finished eating, we thought about riddles for some time before heading back to the flat to do this post and to go to bed.
That’s all for now, Folks!

After being woken up this morning in the ‘maid’s quarters,’ I ate a hurried breakfast and got into a truck with Uncle Richard, my father, and Victor, a seismologist for one of the colleges here in Arequipa. We drove out of town on a road that used to be the main throughway between Arequipa and Cusco. It is now mainly unused, so there was no traffic on our way up through the thousands of meters. We went up and up and finally arrived at the sensor housing that we were going to decommission.

The sensor was a metallic cylinder that weighed about 45 pounds and had an internal pendulum to measure quakes from different areas. It is expensive and fits into a plastic box about twice its size for shipping purposes. We officially decommissioned the sensor as soon as we had moved it from its specified corner where it had been resting for 5 years, pointing north. After we had packed everything away and taped the wires together, we rode back down the mountain.

When we got back to the flat, we messed around for a little bit before we all went with Victor to a mill, where there were llamas, and to a storage facility for the CalTech equipment. In the basement, there were several seismographs that were working while we talked. Victor turned up the amplifier for the sensor and made it look like there had been an earthquake on one of the seismographs for our amusement and we looked at the various sensors in the three rooms. When we were finished, we went back to the flat.

That’s all for now, Folks!

With a yellow poncho and only one arm sticking out of the arm hole, my mother commented that she was the ‘big bird.’ We are in Arequipa now and are staying at my Uncle Richard’s apartment in downtown. We woke up this morning early in Arica and drove to the Arica international Airport. When we got there, the airport was empty. After waiting and waiting for a while.

There was finally someone at the check-in counter and we checked in and were the first people waiting upstairs for the police counter to open. We waited for a while upstairs before the police counter opened and we were able to go through that and security before waiting for a while more for the airplane to get ready.

After 35 minutes of flight time, we popped down into Arequipa and found my Uncle Richard waiting for us and reading a novel. When we got out into the parking lot, we found a taxi and all 5 of us got into a space meant for only 4 people. When we finished up with that and all of the grunting of going up 4 flights of stairs to my uncle’s flat, where we spread our stuff out for a while. When we decided to leave, we went out to get keys, Claro, and look into some museums.

We first got some keys duplicated by a streetside vendor before walking down the street for a ways and getting to a convent. We learned about how the nuns were not allowed to leave the walls and only their slaves could go out. We also learned how they were NEVER EVER allowed to see men, and even the priest for Mass was always behind a curtain.

When we finished up with that, we found that outside, it was raining, so on a street corner, we bought a poncho and an umbrella and went to a grocery store to buy some necessities. After going through the necessary steps to get a taxi back to the flat, we rode back and the new keys worked. For the rest of the evening, we have eaten See’s Candy, talked, and done things on some of the various electronics scattered around the room.

That’s all for now, Folks!