PERU

There is so much fascination and mystery waiting for you in Peru. Walk through the corridors of ancient Incan ruins and look out stone windows onto vistas of white capped Andean Mountains. The Amazon Rain Forest and the Amazon River are full of all shades of green, neon blue butterflies and more leaf shapes than one can imagine. Vines and birds and sloth high in the tree tops. Hot pink fresh water dolphins in the water. And the canopy walk, narrow swinging walkways hanging among the tallest branches 100 feet off the ground. The exotic birds echo, then chaotic insects fill the air and the frogs take over singing to each other in the calm river as the hot sun turns to night.

Enjoy the aerial view from the Cessna airplane looking down onto the Nasca Land Drawings: ancient lines as big as roads forming pictures of spiders, monkeys, birds etched into the desert floor in grand scale, images viewed only from an airplane created two thousand years ago -- long before there were airplanes!

The Incan streets of Cusco are similar in some ways to Kathmandu. And the famous Incan ruins of Machu Picchu look good at any angle. Andean music will fill your soul as you explore the site. The small pan flutes play the high notes and the four-foot flutes play the low notes while two guitars and a single drum beat shake the rock. The Peruvian llams have big ears, long necks and an ability to spit while the Peruvian dogs are hairless.

Then along the coast there are sand dunes rolling for miles with an oasis tucked inside, palm trees surround a lagoon where a mermaid lives! And a few miles south where it never rains, an ancient cemetery stirs up mental drama of the past. These mummies sit in their tombs. Waiting. They have never been to museums. Everywhere, human bones and broken pottery litter the sand -- a giant puzzle of an ancient culture. Shattered. No time or money will put it back together.

Islands in the rough sea made of rock are covered with birds. Even penguins(!) and sea lions roar and swim in the surf and crowd over the rocks. The caves the rock creates are enticing as the waves are crashing twenty, thirty feet in the air.