Oliver comes to town!

For the past two weeks I was so so lucky to have Oliver with me to share my life in Peru - it was great! A quick synopsis of our visit together:

I picked Oli up in Lima, where we hung out in the "park of love", which was built as a counterforce to all the monuments to war. The benches are all covered with snippets of love poems and names of well-known literary and real-life couples

We then spent a week in Huancayo, where I worked and he checked out the local sites, such as the Parque de la Identidad (below). We made a bunch of yummy Mexican food one day and took it to share with my co-workers. Delicious!

We wanted to go to Cusco and Machu Picchu and thought it would be a great idea to take a bus from Huancayo all the way there. Although it looks like a short trip as the crow flies, the route goes over the andes on curvy, unpaved roads and we were really glad for the beautiful scenery and not-so-frequent breaks on our....32 hour trip (!):

We stopped off in Ayacucho for a day, where we visited the capital of the Wari empire (a pre-inca culture). Although the site is 16 square km, only a very small area has been excavated, but we were able to see what was likely a ceremonial centre:

Ayacucho is a really beautiful city, but not highly touristed (it was the centre of the Shining Path movement in the 1980s, but is safe now). And then we were off to Cusco and Machu Picchu!

We lived the full-blown tourist life in Cusco, buying wool hats and llama sweaters and eating over-priced food -we loved it:

We'll have to wait until July for our next adventures together - I know they'll be wonderful.