Inca Trail

Here we are, bug-sprayed up to begin walking the Camino Inka, or Incan Trail.

It was a hot, muggy, buggy day of hiking.

But there were a lot of cool, jungley plants to look at, especially near the beginning.

These ones were my favorites.

Limes

Passion fruit, I believe.

Lots of bananas.

In Hazel's words (this is SO FUNNY):

"At one point Orrin stopped me to show me a lizard. I was really excited to see it and tried grabbing it. But it skittered away onto some dried grass just off the trail. So I carefully gauged the distance, and jumped onto the grass with my hands outstretched to catch it. I did not catch it. Instead, my leg fell through the grass because I'd jumped off a cliff and there was nothing underneath the grass. Of course, by then my entire family had caught up and watched me do it. So that was embarrassing and I didn't even have a lizard to show for it. Orrin helped me up and for the rest of the hike Dad made fun of me."

It was truly hilarious because she did that pre-jump arm swing (just like Merlin/squirrel on Sword in teh Stone), and carefully jumped off the side of the mountain. hhaahaha!

Later on her instagram, when she had caught a different lizard at Machu Picchu (spoiler alert: we get to Machu Picchu) she wrote: 

Life recently.
(Yes, I’m overjoyed about catching that lizard. No, don’t ask me about the poor decisions I’ve made in pursuit of lizards)

We made it to this place that overlooks the valley, and you can see Machu Picchu from afar. (Actually our little cabins that night had the same view.)

We saw some other ruins, but we were all pretty tired by then, so mostly it was just Brett that was interested.

Below are some of the ones that haven't been uncovered yet.

Then we got to our lodge and had lunch. Hooray! The table is long so that everyone can sit on the one side and look out the window to the view of Machu Picchu.

Our appetizers of Palta Rellena (stuffed avocados, very tasty).

So there's Karin, Eliza, and Sami. They had a bit of a hard day with the climb.

Mmmm, trout, potatoes, some kind of bean or something. This was delicious and is making me very hungry right now.

Navy was looking very cute and dirt-streaked and her eyes were pretty in the light so I had to take a lot of pictures.

Our room for the night. But first, for a siesta!

A closer-up of Machu Picchu.

For a while Talmage hit rocks out with his stick-bat.

After our siestas we went and played by/with the fire until dinner at 7:30.

Again from Hazel's journal: 

"Dinner was really good. We had hot chocolate to go along with it, and Ethne accidentally dumped the cocoa powder all over herself. It covered her pants and chair, and she had to go outside to shake off. When she came back in I was still laughing at her so she started laughing too and choked on her hot chocolate and had to spit it out on the table. I laughed even harder. 

After dinner I took a quick, freezing shower before going to bed. I woke up a couple times in the night, once because the rain sounded like a hailstorm on the tin roof, and several times because my bug bites were itchy."