We’re back! It’s great to be home and my 2 furry cats are very happy to see us. Missy had a big chat to us before retiring to her favourite spot under the guest bed and Pirate is purring loudly asleep on the floor beside my desk.

If you haven’t had the chance to catch up on our stories and photos, feel free to check out the following posts:-

• Cuzco – the capital of Peru during the Incan times
• Sacred Valley – on the way to Machu Picchu
• Machu Picchu – the lost city of the Incas
• Puno – sits on the edge of Lake Titicaca
• Argentina – home of the Tango
• Chile – home of delicious red wine
• New York – a city that never seems to sleep

The month away has been great for me, not only in having time with Nick and enjoying our holiday, but allowing me to step back from my businesses and get clarity around a few things.

Tara and I are working hard on our second journal, Journal for the Pregnant Goddess. Our mock is with our graphic designer and we are at the point of approving pages. We’re hoping we’ll be in production by the 10th June in time for a TV promotion with WIN TV on the 5th July.

I also spent some time chatting with a publisher/distributor in the US. She’s keen to work with me on a few “Modern Goddess” projects, which is very exciting. She is also interested in distributing our journals in the US.

Things will be busy over the next couple of weeks and then my parents arrive on the 27th June until the 16th July. I’ll keep in touch with all my adventures as things happen.

Until then… have a great week/weekend.

With love, Nicole xo

It’s nearly 18 years ago that I was in New York with Kathryn. This time it was great to look at New York from a different perspective. Our hotel was in a great location, walking distance to Time Square and Broadway. We walked everywhere.

On my last visit I didn’t go to Central Park so Nick and I took a day to wander through the park, soak up the atmosphere and visit their zoo. We were amazed at how many people were enjoying the park.

We did as all tourist do… used a ‘hop on, hop off’ bus to see the city, saw a Broadway show, shopped and did some bar hopping.

The Broadway show was The Lion King and it was fantastic! The costumes were amazing and the performers truly talented. We both loved it.

As a big fan of the Sex and the City series, I had to see the movie… how could I not while in New York? It took us 2 days to get tickets and we both enjoyed it. I won’t spoil it for anyone seeing the movie.

Our time in the “big apple” has been relaxing and fun. To view our photos, visit our New York album.

Chile was another beautiful South American country we visited, however we only got to see a small part of it… Santiago and the wine region around Santa Cruz.

We were definitely “wined out” after 5 days of tasting some of the best Chilean wines. Wine tasting in Chile is a little different to wine tasting in Australia. In Chile you need to book ahead of time and if you turn up at a vineyard without an appointment, they may say no to providing you with a tasting. They also give tours of the vineyard explaining their wine making process, and then provide a more formal wine tasting.

We visited a couple organic wineries as well as some bio-dynamics. Bio-dynamics use natural composting and some organic techniques, however they still use fertilisers and pesticides.

Santigo is a pretty city, quiet modern and the main reason for this is due to earthquakes destroying their older buildings. The countryside is beautiful and Santa Cruz is surrounded by mountains and coastline. Some places we could see the snowcapped mountains.

The food was amazingly delicious and so fresh. They have plenty of seafood due to having such a long coastline.

Some of the wineries had friendly dogs, one in particular had a saint bernard who got a bit excited about me being out of the car. He wanted to jump all over me and play… the back of him waged excitedly and he playfully growled at me. I had to get back in the car because he was going to bowl me over.

Another winery played a CD of monks chanting to their top of the line range of wines. It was a winery with spiritual philosophies. Their Marketing Director had been in a couple of really bad accidents where he experienced angels saving his life so in dedication, every one of their wine labels has an angel on it.

We would love to go back and explore more of Chile. To view our photos, visit our Chile album.

After Machu Picchu we headed to Puno, which is on Lake Titicaca, the largest, highest lake in the world. While there the farmers were striking and therefore local attractions were closed, many of the businesses were closed as well as the buses and taxi’s stopped running. We had to catch a bicycle to the docks to go on our tour around Lake Titicaca.

Lake Titicaca is home to the unique floating island of the Uros constructed from interwoven totora reed. They are pretty amazing and the people living on the islands are not Peruivan.

Many centuries ago the Uros constructed the floating island to isolate and protect themselves from their rival Incas and Collas. There are no pure blooded Uros left in Peru as they have intermarried with Aymara speaking natives that predominate the area. They have fish farms and sell fish as well as crafts woven from the reed.

To view our photos, visit my Uros Island album.

After Uros, we treked over the island of Taquile. The island is beautiful with lots of pre-inca terraces. There is about 300 families that live on the island. We stopped in at one house who hosts guests and cooks a delicious lunch using local produce. We had a delicious vegetable soup and baked fish. From the island you can see part of Bolivia.

To view our photos, visit my Taquile Island album.

On our last day we visited a pre-Inca complex that has amazing funeral towers called “chulpas”. The place is called Sillustani and the chulpas were built by the Collas people to bury their nobles. As with the pre-Inca and Inca beliefs, the noble Collas also were buried with their personal belongings and food for their journey to the next world. Some of the “chulpas” reach over 36 feet in height.

To view our photos, visit my Puno and Sillustani album.

It’s 10 days since we left Hong Kong and we’ve experienced so much… I’ve broken my blog posts up based on the towns/regions were were visiting because there is so much to tell and so many photo’s to show.

Cuzco – the capital of Peru during the Incan times
Sacred Valley – on the way to Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu – the lost city of the Incas

Enjoy!

We travelled to the village of Aguas Calientes which is at the base of Machu Picchu via train. The train ride was lovely because not only were we in the very first seats and had a birds eye view of the scenery but we were able to see the distinct difference from the mountain life to the jungle.

After an hour and a half train ride we were at the base of Machu Picchu – the “Lost City of the Incas”. After a short bus ride we were there and yes… it lived up to its expectation. Totally mind blowing! Nick was even amazed and taken back by the beauty of the site.

Machu Picchu is 2,000 feet above sea level and I felt like we were in the clouds. Machu Picchu was unknown to the Spaniards and when it was rediscovered in 1911 it was covered in jungle. Today the reason for its existence remains under debate.

After spending a couple of hours wandering the site I took some time to sit in the energy of the place. While Nick and our guide, Hernan wandered around the area, I sat and spent some time meditating. It was pretty amazing because as soon as I shut my eyes the traffic stopped coming past me. I actually sat in a little nook on the way up to the sun dial and I could look over the whole site. Once I finished my meditation, the traffic started again. It felt like the Universe conspired so that I could have my time within the energy of Machu Picchu.

After another hour or so at the site we went back to the village and checked into our hotel. We were pretty lucky because just after checking in it rained and didn’t stop for the next 2 days while we were there.

Our hotel was built on an old Inca site and was so beautiful. The grounds were lush and they had over 200 types of Orchids as well as a conservation project for the Spectacle Bear, South America’s only bear. It is gentle giant living in the jungle of Peru and very shy around humans. The hotel had 2 rescue bears that they hoped they could reintroduce into the wild. They feel that they can achieve this with one of the bears but the other has been bullied too much by other bears in a local zoo that it may not be able to defend itself in the wild.

We spent the next 2 days wandering the village, taking nature walks and relaxing after our climb of Machu Picchu. On the last day we walked straight into a local ceremony with dancers, music and people carrying statues.

To see more of our photos from Machu Picchu and the nearby village, please visit our Machu Picchu photo album and Aguas Calientes photo album.

We are having the most amazing time… the people are friendly, the food deliciously fresh and the scenery spectacular, however the people live simply and to our standards, poorly. After Cuzco we headed to some of the more well known places in the Sacred Valley which includes Machu Picchu but I will write separately about our time there.

We stayed at a beautiful retreat centre, Willka T’ika which was recommended by Juria who stayed there last year. Willka T’ika has 7 beautiful chakra gardens and the most amazing energy.

While in the Sacred Valley we hiked through the picturesque country side and visited the cicular terraces of Moray. The terraces were an agricultural “research laboratory” for the Incas, who studied temperature variation from one terrace to another in order to develop crop varieties.

We also stopped by the salt mines – the only ones in Peru. They are a pretty amazing site on the side of the mountain with the water trickling through them. We actually ended up down near the salt mines and could see the different types of salt being mined.

To reward ourselves for all the hiking and climbing we did, we both experienced a healing session in a Crystal bed back at Willka T’ika.

On the second day in the Sacred Valley we hiked around the Inca ruins at the top of the village of Pisac. This hike was high up on the mountain, walking along the Incan trails along the cliff face. The views were spectacular. The hike took just over 2 hours but was well worth the trek.

On the way back to the retreat centre we were lucky to see some of the local people practicing ceremony dances for “Jesus Day”. Jesus Day is the day is similar to a national day but just for the village. People were dressed in local costume and masks.

At the end of the day we participated in a traditional Despacho ceremony to honour Mother Earth and the Sacred Apus. The ceremony was beautiful and very special. Our Shaman is well known around the area and he spoke in a local language and our guide interpreted.

Basically he offered a range of grains and treats to Mother Earth and the local deities, as well as blessed us. At the end of the ceremony we watched our offering burn and be released into the Universe.

To view our photos from our time in the Sacred Valley, please visit our Sacred Valley photo album and our Willka T’ika and Despacho Ceremony photo album.

I arrived in Lima, the capital of Peru covered from head to toe in hives. I had a reaction to the anti-malaria tablet I took the Sunday before leaving for our holiday. We had an overnight stay in Lima and headed to Cuzco the city closest to Machu Picchu.

During the Inca times, Cuzco was Peru’s capital city and has many beautiful Inca ruins on the outskirts of the city. With Cuzco being 10,912 feet above sea level, we felt the effects immediately when we got off the plane from Lima. We both felt dizzy and light headed as well as suffered with headaches and shortness of breath for the first couple of days.

Our first couple of days we explored the surrounding areas of Cuzco with our guide telling us about the history of Peru from the various ‘theories’ about the Inca times to when the Spanish invaded.

While exploring The Cathedral we loved viewing the paintings that the Spaniards had local artists copy because what they did was put their own take on the Spanish paintings by adding in local flowers, hidden Inca symbols, made people look a little more Incan than Spanish and included local animals every now and then.

The Spanish had the Virgin Mother painted in wide dresses or capes to indicate the mountains because the Incan people honoured Mother Earth and many of the mountains are identified as deities and/or gods.

We visited Sacsayhuaman (easier to pronounce as ‘sexy woman’) which is a complex consisting of huge stones distributed in a zigzag pattern in three platforms with an average length of 1,181 feet. The largest stone block found there is almost 28 feet high and weighs 361 tons. They believe that the construction took approximately 50 years to complete and it took 50,000 men to construct. The site was buried by the Spanish as a way of colonising the locals after the Spanish invaded.

We also visited Tambomachay, a favourite resting place of the Incas and consists of a set of stone structures finely carved, aqueducts and waterfalls originating from nearby springs and thermal sources.

To view our photos, please visit our Cuzco photo album.