no hay palabras...

I sincerely apologize that I've gone 12 days without etching new marks on these pages (or I guess it's more like sending html bytes through cyber space).  But, I hope a one week survey of southern Peru was a good enough reason to leave you all waiting.

After 3 city buses, 3 tour buses, 4 taxi cabs, 1 train, and miles walked I arrived at the summit of what would quite probably be the peak experience of my young life.  To translationally echo my post title, there are no words.  At least, I have no words to capture the essence of Inca stone fortresses, temples, and homes 8,000 feet above sea level embodying more than five hundred years of harsh weathering after a hundred years of raw history.  Nor do my 335 photos, now edited and embellished (or, *Picasafied thanks to google), offer a sample of the emotions and mystery as dynamic and sheer as the surrounding granite faces.

I'm quite certain Machu Picchu is not a place to be observed and justly-appreciated through a computer monitor or any digital space for that matter.  It is absolutely an experiencing, so keenly palpable in every sense that I can only urge you go...and I don't say that lightly.  Buy some Inca Cola, find a taxi from Cuzco, take the train from Ollantaytambo, chew on some coco leaves so you don't get altitude sick and take on the 1 hour hike straight up the mountainside to arrive at the grand entrance.  Try the pisco sour, pet an alpaca, barter for a chompa, by all means climb Wyna picchu, and please eat some pancita off the street before you ask what it is.

It's late and I'm waking up at 5:30 tomorrow morning.  So, now I'm just gonna post a lot of photos and hope they're good enough to convince one or two of you take me seriously...see you before the end of the semester?

I'm waiting...