May 17

My host family is actually great. The house is the exact opposite of what I expected... not only do I have running water, but I have a hot shower, and my Senora's cooking can be awesome, and when its not, at least it's edible. I am very pleased and comfortable with where I am lving. Today, we decided to explore, we know we aren't supposed to do anything physical due to the altitude sickness, but we figured a walk wouldn't hurt... we were kind of wrong. We ended up with three who were so exhausted we just wanted to pass out, let alone walk from the taxi to the door, and one who had a headache so bad he literally couldnt move. We started with a simple walk, that ended up heading uphill. Upon realizing this, we decided it would be a good idea to just keep walking up the stairs and rocky pathway that led to the top of yet another mountain (as if we weren't already on one). We were aiming for a Jsus statue at the top of the mountain that we never thought we would get to. When we got sort of close, some guy offered a horseback tour up the mountain and we didnt even think before we accepted. We were out of breath and my chest hurt. Did he put us on horses? No. He told us an 8 minute walk. Was it? Nope. He walked us 20 minutes or more higher (we did walk by the Jesus we didn't think we'd reach) and we found the horses.
We rode them to the Temple Luna, which was really fun. My horse we decided was the Volkswagon because we never knew what he was going to do. JT was enjoying his "one horse power" and the rest were having fun until my horse decided to wreak havoc upon everyone else. When he wasn't getting kicked for getting to close to Paul's horse, he was biting Lauren's or running away from everyone else, with me flailing on his back. Needless to say we didn't get along to well. Overall it was fun though. We got to see a lot of sites during the day and ride some prett interesting animals on a less than safe trail up a mountain. I'd say job well done.