Last week I shared photos from the week I spent in the Peruvian highlands and today I’m sharing photos from the week we spent on a river cruise down the Amazon aboard the Aria.  I traveled to the Ecuadorian Amazon back in 2012, staying in a jungle lodge along the Napo, and this was a fun and different perspective on the Amazon.  If your focus is for intensive wildlife viewing I would definitely recommend the jungle lodge over the boat, but for a relaxing vacation it was lovely to watch the water go by from bed in the rooms with their floor to ceiling windows and dine on delicious 5 star cuisine every day.  We saw sloths, monkeys, tarantulas, anacondas, pink dolphins, countless birds (although my brother-in-law did count them) and I even caught a few piranhas fishing- it felt straight out of Amazon Trail!

This Spring I had the amazing opportunity to travel the highlands of Peru with my family and recharge my creative energy in some of the most gorgeous landscapes I’ve ever seen.  We spent a week traveling in Lima, the Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu and then ending in Cusco before we headed to the Amazon, which I’ll post photos from next week.  I may have gotten a tad light headed from the altitude, and my Contax bit the dust in the rain at Machu Picchu, but it was well worth it for the incredible sites!  Some highlights were visiting a village located 12,500 ft above sea level and seeing their natural dye techniques for alpaca wool- and meeting lots of llamas and alpacas, and our dinner at Astrid y Gaston in Lima, which was incredible!

Before my family went down to Cuba for New Year’s we spent a few days in Florida exploring Key West.  I grew up visiting my grandparents outside of Miami every year, but had never visited the Keys before and found it to be a very quaint and beautiful part of the US that feels like nothing else in the US.  We stayed at the lovely (but in desperate need of an update) Casa Marina, which is a Waldorf Resort, just a 5 minute walk from the main strip of town.  The highlights of our stay were: kayaking in the mangroves, visiting the butterfly sanctuary, and meandering the streets looking at the beautiful architecture.  On the drive back up from Key West to Miami we got to see an adorable Key Deer and her calf, who was super friendly and came right up to the camera to give me a sniff.