Peru: Lima and Cusco

We started our trip off in Lima, sightseeing and taking in the beautiful buildings of one of the largest cities in Peru. Compared to a lot of Europe and my recent trip to India, I was blown away by how clean this insanely large third-world city was. The streets and buildings were beautiful. Here is our group taking a break after seeing a lot of the older city and visiting some cathedrals.

Here is one of the main squares in Lima. The city did not feel as big as it really was. The night before we randomly ran into a Peruvian man who is also LDS, so he took us around Lima for part of the day. It was incredible to have a native tour guide tell you about his city. Zack, of course, was my personal translator since I was the only one there who didn't speak Spanish or Portuguese.

Hoops and Yoyo came along for the ride. Thanks to my friend Arianne (who's family has the tradition of taking these two guys along on trips and snapping photos with them), they have been on my last two trips and Julie took them along to see Peru. Here they are following the local behavior. When in Peru....

After seeing Lima, we took a city bus to the edge of the city near the coast, called Mira Flores. We stood on the edge of the hill and watched the ocean. It wasn't warm by any means, but it was refreshing to see the ocean. I also decided to give Jocelyn a little love.

Jocelyn, Julie, and I taking in the scenery. Hey, are those matching bags! Yes, they are. I found an incredible deal online, so we all decided to get the same bag. You might also notice we have matching clothes and hats as well (also due to some great deal finding and everyone jumping on the bandwagon).

Here is our group with our friend, Jose, who took us around Lima. Thanks Jose!

From there we flew to Cuzco, which was an incredibly beautiful city high up in the Andes (11,000 feet). I couldn't get over how steep some of the streets were, how cars still managed to drive up these steep, narrow streets, and how much it reminded me of Florence, especially the view of the city's tiled roofs (below).

Here is a view from above the city looking down on the main square of Cuzco.

After seeing the city, we hiked up to see old ruins in the mountains above Cuzco. From there we took a horseback ride around the mountains to see four different sites. Our horses were pretty poorly behaved, but we had a really fun time seeing the countryside and the beautiful sky. I still can't get over how incredible the clouds were.

Here is our group (notice the matching pants and hats) huddling for warm at one of the stops we made on our horseback tour. It was pretty chilly high up in the mountains, especially with the sun setting. Todd apparently was too hardcore to huddle for warm, but Zack had already given in. Welcome to the fold, Zack.