Reading on the Road

One of the nice things about taking trips is that you get to read a lot of books. At home I don't get as much time to read because I have to go to school, do my homework, eat dinner, do my chores, and all of a sudden it's time to go to bed. I have read five books on this trip, including: City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende, My Big Fat Zombie Gold Fish by Mo O'Hara ( which I read four times), Nikolas and Company number one by Kevin McGill, Nikolas and Company number two also by Kevin McGill, and The Last Super Hero by Stephen Altrogge.

I have really liked all of these books. I would recommend these books to all my friends. I have two favorite books. They are the Nikolas and Company books and the Last Super Hero.

Invaders of Peru

We're in Cusco, Peru, which was the capital of the Incan Empire. We have been walking around Cusco a lot, and have seen a lot of Incan ruins, including temples and a big fortress. The Incan Empire was the biggest and most powerful Empire in the new world. It included Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia and Colombia, and there were millions of people who lived there. Until 1532, when a group of 160 Spanish conquistadors came and took over the Incan Empire. 

The way the Spanish defeated the Incans was that they had steel armor, swords, guns, and horses and the Incans had wooden clubs, slings, and spears and their armor wasn't strong enough against the Spanish weapons. What did the most damage were the cavalry charges, there weren't any horses in the Americas. I can imagine that the Incans were terrified by the horses if they were new to their culture. The first time the Incans and the Spaniards battled, the Spanish captured the Incan Emperor and defeated an army with 80,000 people and the Spaniards had 160 people. Not a single Spaniard died but over 5,000 Incans died that day. The Spaniards would have kept going if it didn't turn night because they couldn't see in the dark with out any lights. Even though the Incans were defeated they still held the longest stand against the Spanish.  

CHOCOLATE IS GOOD!!

The Mayans were the first to use coca beans for money, they would use four coca beans to buy a guinea pig and one hundred coca beans to buy a slave. Cacao trees are found in  South America and Africa. The cacao trees grow up to 12 to 15 meters( 36 to 45 feet tall). The fruit looks kind of like a giant avocado, the inside smells like a coconut, they grow on the trunk of there trees and monkeys like to open them up and eat the inside but not the seeds. The Mayans used to make a sacred drink with coca ground up with  human blood. Today my mom, my brother, and I went out because the night before we made reservations for a chocolate making class at the Choco Museo in Cusco.

Walking the Streets of Cusco

We are in Cusco, it's a town high up in the Andes at, over 11,000 feet high. In Cusco we've been taking really long walks around. On our walks the streets have been super skinny and the stair cases are really steep. On the steep hills, houses are built and their roofs are usually orange. Whenever you look out over the city you see an ocean of orange roofs. There are a lot of plazas and churches next to them. In the plazas there are a lot of people hanging out and talking, and some times there are couples kissing. What I think is cool about the walks around the city is that every time we take a walk it seems like we are in a new place.

Yesterday we took a walk around just for fun, but then when we were just walking we found a place where we got shish kebabs and that was our small lunch. That day, at the same place we got the shish kebabs, we found a market and got some food. Somehow they didn't have any salsa but they did have some taco sauce and weird brown salsa stuff, at least we got some food.

Keeping Clean

this is how the nuns did their laundry

Keeping clean is hard to do on this trip because when we need clean clothes it can be hard to find laundry places (lavanderias). The first time we tried to do our laundry was in La Serena. When we were out looking for a place we found one, but when we gave the ladies who worked there our laundry, they said that it would cost 30,000 pesos (60 dollars) to do our laundry. We thought it was pretty expensive! The next time we tried to do laundry was in our apartment in Iquique, because the website said that you could do your laundry but you couldn’t. After we had to haul our dirty clothes over the border we got to wash them in Arequipa. It was the most successful because it only cost 54 soles (only 18 dollars). Although even that was a bit funny because the hostel we were staying at said that if we walked our laundry it would be less money than them driving the laundry there. But, it still cost the same amount after walking across town with our big heavy dirty clothes bags, and it was kind of hard.

Monasterio de Santa Catalina

On Thanksgiving day we crossed the border into Peru. From the border town Tacna we took a long bus ride to Arequipa. When we got settled in we went to a Monasterio.

"In 1579, less than 40 years after the Spanish arrived in the city of Arequipa, the Santa Catalina de Siena Convent was founded. Since its inception, women from diverse social backgrounds have entered the convent to serve as cloistered nuns, never again to return to their homes and families."

I took some really cool pictures at the Monasterio, based on line, texture and color.