first blog from peru

This first posting from Peru has been a mission. Our schedule of visiting rainforests and Inca ruins has been hectic. Finding time to get online has not been easy between 4 am starts on jungle trails, air connections and traditional dances. Then, of course, the language of computers in Peruvian internet cafe´s is Spanish. This brings its own fun problems when trying to email home from yahoo: for a start, the spanish keyboard has no @. Ok, so you can see I found it, but try asking the laconic operator of an andean internet cafe how to find @ from this from a Spanish phrase book. For those who need to know, it is Alt Gr 2. Then, for a first time blogger like me, when the Blogger website turns to Spanish, I can barely read the help menu to tell me how to add a new post, let alone upload photo´s. Before I know it, the guide is hunting me down for a visit to a Spanish conqueror´s cathedral built on top of monumental Incan stone blocks. I already have a reputation for losing my stuff, being booked on the wrong flight etc, so I dont like to keep them waiting.
Anyway, if you´re reading this, I´ve mastered the basics and this photo is of me standing in fornt of said monumental blocks of Sacsaywaman, the Inca fortress overlooking Cuzco which was the scene of the last stand of the last Inca emporor. I´ve already visited Cuzco, and Peurto Maldonado, a frontier town in the Amazonian ran forest, on the other side of the Andes. Tomorrow we head for the Sacred Valley and in three days we set of on our hike of the Inca trail to Machu Picchu. I will try to keep you posted. But just know that this is a wonderful trip, I feel safe and the other members of my tour group are all absolutely fabulous. They´re dying to see my blog.