Greetings readers,

We are home. In as much as two homeless people can be. We're in Raleigh staying with Heather's parents for a few days attempting to resume normal lives. We hope to make some visiting rounds in the next few weeks, so if you think we're inclined to come visit you, start planning your excuses now.

Its going to take me a little while to sort through pitcures and get the rest of them uploaded, but we'll continue to post when new galleries are up and we might make some cathartic "in hindsight" posts which ought to prove amusing. But given our track record, its possible none of those things will happen. Except the pictures. I promise the pictures will get uploaded.

Also, our mobiles have been reactivated, so if you have our numbers (they haven't changed), call us. We're sick of just talking to each other.

So uh, what TV shows are good this season?

Blue Footed Boobies that is... And Red Footed Boobies, and something called Nazca Boobies. I have just fundementally changed how search engines see our humble website.

Lets talk about Boobies for a minute. Boobies are one of the Galapagos highlights. They are oddly smug looking birds that have no fear of humans and hence may be the most photographed subject on these islands. The Red Footed Boobies are odd because they hang out in high bushes, something most other web footed birds can't do. The Nazca Boobies are just plain pretty. And the Blue Footed Boobies, well, they... are a pain in the ass. Largely due to the fact that they refused to land so I could take a picture of their bright blue feet and the funny mating dance they do. I did get a picture of some standing on some rocks in the distance, and you can sort of make out a bright blue smudge underneath them, but given the incredible close-ups we've gotten of all the other birds here, a blurry long distance shot just isn't satisfying.

There's still time though, we leave for the airport in a few minutes, maybe there will be some hanging out in the departure lounge here. Weird stuff like that happens here. I was taking a nap on the beach a few days ago and this adolescent sea lion sort of flopped up to me to have a sniff. I moved, sniffing relationships are verboten, but it was still pretty cool. Our group watched the sea lion roll around in the sand for a bit and a Swiss girl in our group decided Weinerschnitzel was an apt name. We got some really good pictures of schnitzel that will be posted soon. (By the way, if you haven't looked lately, we did have time to get two Vietnam galleries posted.)

We also had a few really overpriced dives with dozens of sea lions and sharks. The sea sions are fascinating to watch underwater, they love diver bubbles, so they sort of forget that they're underwater to eat and just show off for divers. I took some movies that I hope will look OK on a TV. The Galapagos can't be called the most beautiful place to dive in the world. The water clarity is not great, but the number of animals you can see is astounding. Even when we weren't diving, just riding along in boats, we saw whales, hammerheads, and rays jumping out of the water.

There are a mess of Iguanas and lizards here as well, I nearly ran out of memory.

Any post about the Galapagos would be incomplete without a mention of the Tortoises. They're huge. And old. Old and huge. And not very fast. Old, huge, and slow. Yeah.

Sorry those last bits were terse, we have to leave for the airport in about two minutes ago, and I still haven't finished packing. Home in two days!

Happy Wednesday night, everyone. Let me start by saying that we will be back in the States in exactly 2 weeks, and we couldn't be more ready. We are pooped. The following will hopefully explain why we are so tired. Unless I fall asleep while I'm writing this.

From Matt's post you should already know that we crossed the Pacific Ocean and International Date Line (meet sexy exotic singles in your area) in pretty quick order. So we slept and did laundry in Santiago. And we slept in Lima. That is until Sunday morning, when we began our trip to the Nazca Lines. That involved getting to the Lima airport at 6:30am, waiting until 10:30 for our delayed plane, eating an Egg McMuffin and Dunkin Donuts, then flying to Ica, where we transferred to a 12-passenger Cessna for an hour-long, vomit-inducing flight over the lines. They were cool. We didn´t throw up, but we felt very sick. The plane just flew in sharp circles the whole time. They would show the spider drawing out the right window, then quickly turn around so you could see it out the left window. It was rough, but I'm glad we saw them. Then we had a nice buffet barbecue lunch, then a short trip to a museum, then a short trip to an oasis nestled between some big sand dunes, then back on the plane to Lima, where we arrived at 6pm. It was airport food or room service, so we headed right into the departure area for some greasy Papa John's pizza. After the pizza, it was back to the hotel to sleep until we had to get up at 3am Monday morning for our flight to Cuzco.

We got to the airport around 4:30am, had more Dunkin Donuts, and flew to Cuzco. We did nothing in Cuzco except pick up our train tickets to Machu Picchu and work on uploading pictures from Vietnam (so long ago, so far behind) on a surprisingly fast Internet connection. By that night I was feeling some of the altitude effects (the same rapid heart rate I had at Mt. Everest base camp). I had a lot of trouble sleeping, which was perfect, because we had to get up at 5:15 to catch our 7:00 train to Machu Picchu. The train ride was beautiful. The rocking of the train promised to lull us to sleep, but we managed to stay awake by talking to a lovely couple from Minneapolis (Hi, Sam and Harvey!).

Our hostel here in Aguas Calientes (or Machu Picchu Pueblo, as the locals call it) "upgraded" us to a suite with a view. "View" means higher up, which means a lot of stairs. We are completely exhausted by the time we get to our room. We did manage to head straight back out for some lunch and the trip up to Machu Picchu. This is the first place savvy enough to know what a fake International Student Identification Card looks like, so we had to pay the full $40 each, instead of $20. And $12 each for the round-trip bus ride up the crazy serpentine road. Hell if I was going to walk up there.

Once we finally got up there, we couldn't have been more pleased. To use the word of a man I met at the ATM yesterday, "Gobsmacked." (I decided I don't use that enough. Expect to see it more: Galapagos? -Gobsmacked.) It was awesome. A little bigger and steeper than I expected it to be. Very green. Polite resident llamas that are very patient with the kids that just jump on their backs. Just breathtaking scenery. We got ourselves a little book to help us know what we were looking at, and we managed to see a lot of it in the few hours we were there.

We went back this morning to see it in the morning light. We ran into a bunch of groups that had just entered Machu Pichhu via the Inca Trail. I felt quite lazy and ashamed of my silly fat self seeing all these people come in, but what can you do? We hit some areas we intentionally skipped yesterday to give us something new to see today. Definitely the best views today from up high. It's also just a fun place to romp around. The climbing up uneven, rocky, old stairs can be taxing, but I would just rest whenever I felt like it and look around. The sun is also really strong up there, but I had a hat and SPF 30. The altitude isn't a problem, because it's lower here than in Cuzco. We came back down to town after a few hours and ate some lunch. Matt went back up just to take pictures with the lateday sun, while I rested. An electric storm came out of nowhere, so he packed it up when he saw lightning hit the next peak over. Tripods and lightning just don't mix.

So, there we are. If my 5th grade teacher, Ms. Bowden, is reading this, I want extra credit for actually visiting the place I did my project on.