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We arrived in Arequipa early in the morning after an all-night bus ride from Nazca.  The bus wasn’t so bad, but we were led to believe we would have fully reclining beds, like we did coming down from Máncora.  Instead, we found ourselves with semi-reclining seats, not that far off what you’d get flying couch.  All that is to say that we arrived tired.

The first hostel we looked into was the Casablanca, right next to the Plaza de Armas.  They had a room, but it was a whopping $35 a night, twice what we were expecting to pay.  On the plus side, they had a room available and were willing to let us check in at 7am so we wouldn’t have to kill time until the noon-hour changeover. After a quick sidewalk consultation, we decided to take it for at least one night.

Our room was nice.  A little on the small side, but with a balcony looking out on the street, a private bathroom (with both hot water and pressure), a desk, and a relatively fast wi-fi network.  After that bus ride, though, all we cared about was the comfortable bed with the fluffy pillows.

Oksana crashed right away, while I ran out to the store to get us some drinks and some semblance of breakfast.  A little while later, I closed the balcony doors to darken the room and climbed into bed beside her.  I laid on my back for a few minutes and, eventually, my eyes because accustomed to the dark.

Above me, projected on the ceiling, was the street scene outside!
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You might think that traveling to Peru and bearing witness to the wonders of Machu Picchu is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  I would have thought so, too, except that I just got back from my third trip there.

I’m always the one advocating some new and exotic locale whenever Oksana and I plan our travels (with the whole world to see, why keep going back to the same places?), but somehow Peru just keeps falling into my lap.

The first time I went was in 1998, when my roommate and I stayed in South America for a couple months after a university trip to Ecuador.  The second time, in 2002, was when I was invited by the university to help lead a class through the country.  Last month, six years later, opportunity came a’knockin’ once again.  Peru had treated me well twice before; how could I say “no?”

Even with my desire to see something new, these recurring trips never disappoint.  The first time there, we flew to Machu Picchu on a helicopter because the train tracks leading to the ruins had washed out in a storm.  The second time, we hiked the Inca Trail and visited many more of the ruins around Cusco.  This time, I was a part of a group that headed down into the Amazon basin for a few days in the jungle.

This was also the first university trip upon which I lugged my video camera around.  The students gave me permission to point my lens in their direction after I promised to make them a great DVD of their adventures.  I shot 14 miniDV tapes worth of footage while we were down there and I plan to add a few more hours of interview footage in the coming weeks.  Before I started editing a project of this magnitude, however, I needed to familiarize myself with what I already had.  It seemed like putting together a short music video would accomplish that goal nicely.

While many of these snippets of video will only mean something to those of us that were in Peru, I trust that the imagery will convey not only the amazing sites we saw, but also how fun, adventurous, diverse, and just downright awesome the people in our group turned out to be.