The Peru Pictures are FINALLY here. I apologize for the delay but we really wanted to whittle the photos down (from 418 to 147) and caption almost all of them. Nothing is less exciting than pictures of edifices or landscapes with no context.

Our Itinerary which may help give more background was the following;

(Flew into Lima via San Salvador, El Salvador. Spent the late evening In Lima and departed for Cusco in the morning.)

• Three days in Cusco acclimatizing to the altitude and visiting the local ruins.
• Four days hiking The Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.

(Flew from Cusco to Puerto Maldanado in the Amazon Basin.)

• Two days in the Tambopata reserve.
• One day in Puerto Maldanado.

(Flew from Puerto Maldanado to Lima Via Cusco.)

• Four days in Lima.

Additionally, I’ve compiled a list of observations that I recorded as we traveled. Again I’ve filtered out some of the more inane items but tried to leave any that gave some sort of context. Like the photos, they are in chronological order.

• Stray dogs everywhere, mostly eating trash, even dogs outside the airport (This turned out to be true everywhere we went)
• For Travis –All the planes we flew were A320’s
• The flight to Cusco was an ascent the whole way, about an hour. The altitude at Cusco is 11,500 feet (over two miles).
• Coca tea is wildly offered as a way of moderating altitude sickness. We were serve our first batch at the hotel immediately when we walked in, before checking in. They must be sick of tourist passing out on them or something. For the most part we were fine, it was easy to get winded just walking around though. All the diesel fumes don’t help.
• Sleeping was difficult at altitude, waking up every hour, bad dreams, not being able to fall back asleep, etc.
• The Cusco Local Brewery (Cusquena) has 10ft walls topped with electrified barbed wire.
• Lunch form a street vender runs about $1 US.
• In an odd coincidence, just like in California, all the cooks were Hispanic.
• Jackie, after 14 years of being vegetarian, had chicken, pork, beef, trout and alpaca…in a single day.
• We rarely saw a woman in a dress with the exception of women in traditional dress. Also there was a noticeable lack of back pockets on jeans.
• Toilet paper rolls were often used in the place of napkins.
• In the Amazon, you cover your mouth when you yawn.
• People in Lima eat a lot of ice cream.
• There is a dearth of change in the country, it seemed like no one could break anything but the very smallest bills, even high end shops. Exact change was at a premium.

And if you managed to read all of this without first looking at the photos, let me save you the trouble of scrolling up. Click here and after the jump just click on "View Slideshow", there is no need to register.