➳ Adventures of M+A Kramer: Peru

In December 2012, we spent Christmas visiting Matt's sister, Andrea and her husband, Dustin in Asia. During that visit, we started brainstorming about where we could all go, and South America came up. A year and a half later, the dreams and plans became reality. We recently returned from spending two weeks trekking around Peru and Ecuador together.

This post is one of many that will follow. We will share about the places visited, food eaten, some of the thousands of pictures taken, experiences gained, and at the very end, the frugal travel breakdown of this trip planned using miles and a budget.

So Peru. My goodness. I was not really sure what to expect. I cannot say that I ever even dreamed about going here prior. When Dustin mentioned Peru and Machu Picchu, my response was, "as long as we can go to the Galapagos too." The thing about traveling with others is sometimes you see and experience places that you never would have thought about before. And in this case, Peru blew me away. It was way better than the pictures in my seventh grade geography book.

Sure, I was nervous about the altitude and flying into a city at 11,000 feet, but one glimpse of the snow-topped Andes and scenes like this, left me in love with this country.

Since Machu Picchu was the main draw to Peru, it is only fitting to start there for now, and I will cover getting there in the next post.

The morning of our visit, we awoke around 4 a.m. to ensure seats on the first buses up to the gates. Anticipation and excitement filled the air as we waited, with many other visitors, to be the first ones in for the day.

Once the gates opened, some of the resident alpacas led us in.

And we were greeted with fantastic views of the ancient city.

Watching the beams of sunlight trying to come over the mountains and break through the clouds was breathtaking.

Meet Andrea and Dustin. Some of you may remember from past posts that they introduced us to the points hobby.

And we are so thankful they did.

Machu Picchu was built around 1450, abandoned around the Spanish Conquest, and not known to the outside world until its discovery in 1911. I cannot fathom how the Incas managed to build this wonder of the world. It is isolated, perched at 8,000 feet within the Andes, and has sheer cliffs on all sides. Not to mention all of the stones fit almost too perfectly together.