2025 Peru Menlo Abroad

 ¡Hola familias!      For our penultimate day, we had a calm schedule full of reflective activities. After breakfast in the hostel, we all sat down and did a full round of "Rose, Bud, Thorn", sharing our responses out to the group. It was an opportunity to be vulnerable about our experience during this trip. We then had free time to walk around the town of Ollantaytambo and look at the shops, restaurants, and beautiful views of mountains and ruins sites.       Afterwards, we ate lunch in the plaza. They served us different types of meats, all on hot rock slabs, sizzling and ready to eat. The dishes were composed of chicken, beef, veggies, and alpaca meat (which Claire thoroughly enjoyed). They were accompanied by sides of salad and french fries with ketchup and ranch sauce.  Lunch at La Serranita Peruvian Restaurant      In the afternoon, we had a Rock, Paper, Scissors contest that Tyler Hinkie won and then did another reflecti...

Cough, achoo, yawn. These are the sounds that filled the lobby of our hotel at 5:15 AM this morning. This was by far our earliest morning yet---we were up before the sun had risen and the roosters had crowed. Sadly, many of us girls woke up under the weather and with a lack of energy (this may have been caused by late night karaoke from the night before). On the contrary, the boys were very... lively! After our breakfast we headed to the bus that would take us back up to Machu Picchu.  In hibernation. First we went on a tour of the Incan city where approximately 400 Incans once lived. We learned about the different types of buildings and their purposes. There is the Temple of the Sun which is dedicated to the sun god, one building was used as a sundial or calendar, and others were just used for food storage. We even chose which house we would've wanted to live in if we were living in this civilization. Of course we chose the biggest ones with the best view.  Peruvian hats in M...

       A warm welcome to all the families of Peru from Julian and Matthew. Today we said our bitter-sweet final goodbyes to our lovely host families before setting off for Ollyantaytambo, then Aguas Calientes, and eventually one of the 7 wonders of the world, Machu Picchu.        We woke up slightly early this morning to finish up packing our final items, enjoy a delicious, home-made breakfast, and meet up in Don Thomas's compound for one final goodbye with each and every home stay family. We began by sharing fond memories and appreciations for all that our families had done for us. We then took many photos with our families and exchanged hugs. Right before our departure, Don and Gladdis handed out custom Zurite mugs consisting of the very hummingbird terraces which we had visited earlier in our trip.  We then loaded up and hopped on the bus which took us to the train station in Ollyantaytambo. There, we were greeted with many locals displayi...

 The group was unable to write a blog this evening but plans to do so tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Hello again! This is Aakarsh and William, writing from Zurite. Sadly, today was our last day in this beautiful town, but we are also looking forward to the last few days of our trip! To commemorate our time in Zurite over the last few weeks, the local community held a Pachamanca celebration to send us off. While this ceremonial gathering took much of the day, the fruits of our labors were a myriad of delicious local foods. The process began with the construction of the oven. Our entire group gathered rocks to form into a dome, and the fire underneath turned these stones into an oven to cook the food in. Once the meat, potatoes, and hand made tamales were prepared, the food was layered between these hot stones and finally wrapped in grass and dirt to slowly cook and soak up the flavors of the earth.  In the meantime, some students prepared fresh salsas to accompany the food. Together we minced onions, carrots, and peppers alongside members of our homestay families.  Other stude...

Yo, what up?! It's your girls Katie K and Hadley L back in DA CASA (in Zurite duh). Big day today, being our last work day here! Tomorrow is our big celebration day, so today we locked in to finish our projects.  Most of us woke up and did our normal morning routine: eating bread, corn mate, potatoes, eggs, and tea for breakfast. Then we headed over to DT (Don Tomas') for our daily poop check and yoga session led by Toph. Afterward, we split into two groups—one to finish mapping the canals and the other to hang up the Hummingbird trail signs.  Our finished signs! Que bonitos! In our all girl power group (+ Topher), we mapped one last canal, traversing 12 km in total. We started up by a reservoir and followed the canal around the perimeter of Zurite. It may have been muddy (to say the least), and there may have been quite a few smells that made our imaginations run wild (and not in a good way), but we had fun queuing songs under different themes. Our favorite theme was "mod...