Peru: The Sportscenter Highlights Edition

The Highlights of Cusco/Machu Picchu, in a pathetically trying to be short and succinct list:

-lots of pretty clouds (yes, I am obsessed with taking pictures of them)
-amazing Peruvian food: Aji de gallina, Lomo saltado, you name it. It´s amazing what actually putting in spices (as opposed to just tons of salt) will do to food.
-taking in the beauty of the city of Cusco, the launching point/acclimation zone for all the gringo travelers.
-NOT getting altitude sickness. Thank god.
-Baby llamas. Enough said.
-Wearing my obnoxious shower sandals that I stole from my mom 6 months earlier in downtown Cusco. Old Navy, bright pink, way too glittery flip flops (hey, I was pathetically trying to lighten my load by only packing hiking boots and shower sandals as my shoes to be packed). Referred to by Michelle as ¨sandals that a drag queen would wear on his down time.¨Picture to come soon.
-kind of near death experience in the United Mice bus (the company me and my friends with) on the way to the start of the Saltankay trail: The road was so narrow that it was hard to make turns on the winding road. At one point, this major rock wall on the left side of the road was preventing us from moving forward, so the driver had to back up to get more room to drive past the wall. In doing so, the right side of the bus was hanging ever so slightly over the cliff (I wasn´t kidding you when I said it was narrow), and naturally, the people on my trek started making death jokes. To distract myself from the pretty narrow but still very plausible idea of dying, I started reading Marley and Me. Ironically, the part that I was on in the book was the part about Marley dying.
-trekking with a diverse group of people, and having an amazing time: The dumb but very friendly jock from Loyola Marymount University, the just out of grad school best friends from Ohio/Colorado, the nerdy but funny quasi-alcoholic neuroscientist lesbian from NY, the token Brit (he looks like a skinnier, less Jewish-ier version of Seth Rogan, I swear. Picture also to come soon), etc. We all had an amazing time together, and are actually all going out for drinks tonight for our last night in Cusco.
-Using my muscles way more in those 5 days than I have in my 6 months in Chile
-Being surrounded by absolutely beautiful open space in the Peruvian Andes.
-Eating way too much soup and porridge for my own good.
-Enjoying the clearer and slower accent of the Peruvians, after 6 months of trying my best to cachar (understand) Chileans, who talk at a mile a minute and will eat syllables like they have been starving for days.
-Seeing the most beautiful, clearest starry skies that I have ever seen in my life.
-Dealing with aggressive, obnoxious, and belligerent, and dumb tourists at Machu Picchu (one norteamericana: ¨I can´t believe the steps of Machu Picchu are still intact. Don´t you think they would be like, ruined, now?¨)
-Seeing how problematic and hypocritical and guilt-inducing and slightly morally wrong it is to go to Machu Picchu. But that´s another post in and of itself.
-65 km, 4 nights, 20-25 hours of sleep, and finally getting to The Destination: Machu Picchu.

Back to Santiago for a few days, then off to BA to see the Bh (Barnhart!). I could not think of a better way to end my amazing semester abroad in South America.