Get ready world...

Baby Criner will be here soon!

Cusco and MAchu Picchu

Before too long I'm going to get all of the pictures from Peru on Kodak Gallery, but until then, a preview of Cusco and Machu Picchu.

Cusco was beautiful! Especially compared to Lima and Iquitos! It definitely reminded me of Spain, but with random Incan walls still around.

In the Plaza de Armas in Cusco

Peruvian Casino

Well, Matt got tired of taking pictures about 3 days ago and I decided today that im through with pictures, too, but we went to the Peruvian casino tonight and it was amazing. For $35, we got dinner, about 12 beers, and 4 hours of $2 blackjack. Peru is awesome!

All that being said, we have to get up in 6 hours to get to the airport for our flight home, and I couldnt be more excited! I cant wait to sleep in my bed, drive my car, cook in my kitchen, do laundry in my washing machine and eat things very AMERICAN. Weve already decided we.re gonna stop at Burger Street on the way home. In 24 hours, we.ll be home!!

The craziest but most awesome idea ever.

So we met this family in our hostel in Lima, the Spiers. They are a family of 4, parents, an 18 year old boy and a 14 year old boy. The sold their house, sold their cars, quit their jobs and decided to travel around the world for a year!

Theyve been all over the place, New Zealand, Austrailia, Thailand, Laos, Jordan, Israel, Turkey, Greece, Spain, I cant remember where else.

It sounds exhausting to me, but theyve loved it. Check out their website: www.teamspiers.wordpress.com

Crazy/Funny/Awesome things about Peru

A few other Peru crack-ups:
- Lots of bands sing live in bars. they sing American songs and you can tell that they dont quite understand what is is theyre singing. hahaha.
- we went to one restaurant where all they played was beatles songs on the peruvian flute. Awesome! i totally wanted to buy that CD.

Peru cracks us up. Some of our favorites so far:

- There exists a fruit that tastes like a pina colada!
- There also exists a fruit that is like a humongous lime, that´s sweet enough to eat like an orange but still makes you do the pucker face.
- Inka Cola: it´s flourescent yellow and tastes like bubble gum
- We saw a lady walking down a hill, breast feeding. WTF?
- There are hundreds (HUNDREDS) of dreadlocked americans and europeans wearing striped pajama pants and peruvian hats. they think they are blending in with the locals and act surprised when people approach them and say "do you speak english?"
- My personal favorite: the best snack ever: chocolate covered saltines. Why has the US not thought of this!?!?!

Welcome to the Jungle...

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The Amazon has been awesome! I dont have a lot of time, but a quick rundown:

- WE WERE ON THE AMAZON! No big deal.

- We saw the second tallest tree in the rainforest - 52 meters tall. it looked like a cartoon tree.
- Tarantulas at least as big as my fist
- monkey island: monkeys crawling all over us and using us as jungle gyms (no pun intended. seriously.) i was smiling in this picture because i was terrified and our guide told me they could smell fear. great.

- pirahna fishing. matt got bitten by a piranha. apparently they have anticoagulants in their mouth, so he bled like a stuck pig. at that point he was the only one in the group whod caught one, so we told him to let the blood drip in the water to attract his fishs buddies. no luck, i didnt catch a darn thing.

- we went to an indian village and learned how to use a blow gun

matt and i with the chief

- we played with sloths and i actually had a boa contricter wrapped around my neck. yikes!

- we visited a river village, ate fresh fruit off the trees, went into a familys house and had fish soup with them. let me tell you how much i did NOT want to eat some dang soup made with river water, but our guide assured us it had been boiled for hours and hours and it was okay to eat. plus the lady offered it to us, it would have been so rude to turn her down. so far im not feeling any ill effects and its been over 12 hours. that means ill make it, right?
- i gave an eskimo joes t.shirt to a little girl in the village. i took a picture with her and im seriously considering submitting it for the joes clothes catalog. = )

thats all for now. ill update with more details later.

End of Day 1 - Lima

the covento de san franciso in lima

matt in the plaza de armas in lima

Day 1 in Lima went much better than I expected. The guidebooks acted like Lima is the scariest place on earth, but really, it was not that bad - no worse than any other big city in the world, as far as i`ve seen. We caught a cab to our hotel in the middle of the night last night with no problems. this morning we went to Lima Centro, checked out the Plaza Mayor, Catedral, and Convento de San Francisco and had no problems whatsoever. We went to a Spanish speaking tour at the convent and understood maybe every tenth word, so we probably missed out on a few things there, but besides that, A-OK. There were catacombs at the Convent and it was amazing - just stacks and stacks of skulls and femors. Crazy. I met a funny old man who kept trying to talk to me. it was funny because a) his family kept shushing him because he was WAY loud, b.) i didnt understand but maybe 1/4 of what he was saying anyways.

Tonight we went to a silly "cultural night" at our hotel, with an Incan band and dancers and such. Matt, of course, made us some new friends from Georgia (the state) so we hung out with them all night and they gave us the low-down on Cusco, as they just returned.

We went to a cevichiera for lunch today. i really wanted to go, and it was okay, but i doubt i will ever eat ceviche again in my life. i tried to explain to matt that it was "marinated" in lemon juice, but he was convinced that it`s pretty much just raw fish in lemon juice. my belly has not been grinning at me tonight, so i tend to agree.

The best thing about Lima is that it is so freaking cheap! we took a cab all the way across town, had went to two museums, had dunkin donuts coffee, took the cab back across town, wandered for a while, took another cab to the restaurant, had lunch, took a cab back to our hotel, and spent a grand total of $60, and that`s including a $40 lunch (two lunches and 4 beers) at a 5 star restaurant. (not because we were stuck on a 5 star restaurant, but because i was so freaking hungry i was near tears (it was after 2:30 when we decided on a plan) and we could not find anywhere to eat so we hailed a cab, gave them an address in my book and went for it.) we took a 30 minute cab ride for $5. AWEsome.

Tomorrow we leave for the jungle. by tomorrow i mean we have to wake up in 2 1/2 hours. our flight leaves at 4:20am. that is not early morning. that is the middle of the night.