April 14, 2009 – Bill's Blog

Andy, originally uploaded by bill kralovec.

My youngest brother celebrated his 37th birthday in style by hiking up to the magical, ancient, Incan city of Machu Picchu in Peru. He is teaching at the Cotopaxi Academy in Quito, Ecuador and during his spring break, traveled to Peru. He did the 26 mile hike in four days. Not too bad for an old man! It was mostly rain during the hike, but it cleared up when they reached the ruins.

Macchu Pichu is in a remote location in the mountains above Cuzco, the former capital of the Incan Empire. Researchers believe that it was used as a ceremonial site, mostly for priests. It was not a main city and was not discovered by the Spaniards, but only in 1911 by British explorer Hiram Bingham. The ruins themselves are nice, but it is the surroundings that are spectacular. Nadia and I visited in 1998, but we took the train instead of earning it like Andy did.

I seem to blog much on Andy’s eating habits. He sampled the Peruvian delicacy cuy which is guinea pig. He didn’t like it, although perhaps it was the chef and not the food itself. I remember it being mostly bones and not much meat.

Congratulations Andy on making it and all the best for another year of health and happiness! We love you!

From Bill, Nadia, Owen, Oliver, Ocean

Owen & Ollie, originally uploaded by bill kralovec.

Owen and Ollie are pictured at the Botanical Gardens here in Belgrade. Sunday afternoon we visited the gardens with the kids. They loved the Japanese garden part of the grounds, especially the little creek. They jumped over it hundreds of times. Ocean lived up to her name, and wanted to sit in the creek.

In the morning I went for a run with Ocean while Nadia watched the kids. It was my first run in a while and I felt sluggish. I am preparing for the Belgrade Marathon this Saturday. I am not sure I can do the half marathon on 1 week’s minor training.

After the gardens we came home and I finally cut our grass. I have this little electric lawnmower that the cord was cut by workers this winter when they were fixing an electrical problem in the house. We took it down to the market and got it repaired. A very nice market indeed! I’ll do a blog post on the market in the future.