the big bottles of peruvian beer which cost about 2 canadian dollars that is. not doing much for the wicked combination of cold (must have been the 4 flights of recycled air), sunburnt patches (it will all add up in the end…), and err uhh tap ass that im battling with right now, but the beautiful beach town of mancora we´re in is certainly making sick feel like paradise.

since lima (where we partied in appropriate south american fashion: all night), we went to huaraz, which is a mountain town in the andes. im not sure what my opinion of our adventure there is yet. its one of two, im sure you can figure out which was pre-summit and which was post-summit:

- glorious trek up a glacier to the top of a mountain for a majestic panorama view of part of the world´s tallest mountain range other than the himalayas

- 7 hour viet-cong death march with heavy spiked boots up to a 5800 metre summit for a lousy photo op.

only time will tell.
off to machu picchu.

edit: i forgot to mention that we started the trek at midnite (yes apparently midnite is not just for staying up past anymore, you can also wake up at midnite), which made it glorious for being a moonlit hike (i sang ¨good morning starshine to myself¨ quite a bit) with the sun eventually rising behind the mountains, but also intolerably cold.
edit2: thanks to a certain furry little polack (love you), i now have the new white stripes album on my ipod which i´m saving till im at the top of machu picchu.