dreaming of Peru...

my sister and i are fortunate to have a mother who loves to travel, and better yet, loves to take us with her. next trip for mom and i at the end of April.....PERU.

image courtesy of About.com

after our l-o-n-g flight to Lima, the capital of Peru, we will fly to Puno. first stop in Puno is to the pre-Incan burial grounds of Sillustani. the above ground burial towers are on the shores of Lake Titicaca, one of the highest navigable lake in the world at 12,532 feet above sea level, which also happens to be our next stop where we will visit the unique floating reed islands...

image of Lake Titicaca courtesy of Sacred Destinations

from Lake Titicaca we will board the world-famous Orient Express Andean Explorer through the picturesque scenery of the Andean Mountains & Plains to the historic city of Cuzco. we spend a couple of days touring through the city. however, i am personally most excited to stay at the five-star Hotel Monasterio, a converted 1592 monastery with much of its original architecture still intact. Because Cuzco and the hotel are situated among the high mountainous altitudes this particular hotel pumps in extra oxygen to each of the guest rooms to offset any altitude sickness problems...how cool is that!...

after our luxury hotel stay we head to the Sacred Valley in Pisac, set high above the valley floor patch worked by patterned fields and rimmed by stone terraces...

image courtesy of Flickr

and what's a trip without a little shopping in the Sunday Pisac Market....

images courtesy of Andean Travel Web

probably the most famous of our Peru destinations is Machu Picchu. our entire trip is based around my mothers and my fascination with this pre-Columbian Inca site...very similar to our previous trip to Guatemala to visit the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Tikal. looking forward to hiking through the ruins...

Machu Picchu

mom and i in Tikal, Guatemala

our final leg of the trip is to the Tambopata National Reserve along the Madre de Dios River in the Amazon Jungle where we'll spend 4 days/ 3 nights at the Inkaterra Reserva Amazonica...and from the looks of it we WON'T be roughing it!...

the lodge at Inkaterra

the rooms at Inkaterra

mom also came across a 'magnificent' photographer in her own pre-trip research from an article entitled Peru's Lost City of Gold, in the March 2009 issue of Conde Nast Traveler. Martin Chambi (1891-1973) is a native Peruvian photographer who is known for his portrait documentation in the city of Cuzco and his landscapes of the countryside...his photos are inspiring, makes me all the more excited to get there....

mom also discovered these belts in the Sundance Catalog, hand stitched by village women in the Ayacucho region of Peru...we're going to scour the country in search of Robert Redfords sweatshop (joking) to find these little ladies....

Sundace Catalog florecita belt

actual photos from the trip to come....

***NOTE: our Peru trip was book through a Peruvian travel agency called Simply Peru, they worked very closely with us to customize our trip.