Onwards to Guatemala

From Iain: We've spent the last few days making our way from one continent to another to begin the Guatemala portion of our trip.  We left our Pisac home of three months on a bus driven by a crazed driver up to Cusco at an unfathomable speed.  We then spent a pleasant day wandering around a few museums in Cusco, none particularly worth writing home about, however.  The highlight of the day was an evening performance of Andean dance and music that we attended.
The next day we got a flight to Lima - just over an hour crossing the Andes.  Once there we were picked up by a taxi arranged by our hospedaje for two nights, the B&B Tradiciones in Miraflores.  With everyone feeling a little fatigued by the activities of the last week we decided to simply visit a single museum during our time in Lima.  We settled on the Museo de la Nacion, which turned out to be a good choice as it was interesting and informative without being overwhelming.  There was a photo exhibit on Machu Picchu, a good display covering the history of Peru, a couple of more in-depth displays on an archaeological site in Peru and the extensive road system constructed by the Inca, and, finally, a photo exhibit on the internal conflict of the 1980s and 1990s (the girls did not view this last exhibit).  I don't have too many photos from our time in Lima, but here's one from inside the Museo de la Nacion:

Museo de la Nacion, Lima

We left Lima yesterday on a flight to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  The less said about the day the better, since it ended up being one of those grueling travel days when just about everything seems to go wrong: a late taxi, check-in problems, boarding delays while everyone was searched, a humiliating hour-and-a-half wait in the visitors line at U.S. immigration while 10 agents processed U.S. citizens and residents each in well under a minute, while 2 agents processed visitors, each taking upwards of 5 minutes each while we were fingerprinted and had our photos taken.  We finally got to our hotel and made the best of it by having a late night swim in the pool and two large decadent pizzas delivered to our room.
Today we had a much better travel day (why is it so much more pleasant these days to leave the U.S. by plane than to arrive in the U.S. by plane?) and a much more positive welcome when we arrived at Guatemala City.  We whizzed though immigration and customs in a jiffy and were then driven at high speed to our hotel in Antigua, Posada Dona Luisa, where we are all now, very tired indeed ...