Peru Update

Aguas Calientes is the small town where we stayed when we visited Machu Picchu. The weather was great when we were there, thank goodness.

AFP: Thousands of tourists stranded at Machu Picchu: "Peru used helicopters to airlift foreign tourists trapped by rain and mudslides that killed seven people in and around its famed Machu Picchu ruins, but frustrations grew among the more than 2,500 still stranded.

The operation, which began Monday, by late Tuesday had rescued 125 of the foreigners, most of whom were waiting by a helipad near the ruins themselves, emergency services said.

But another 1,900 were stranded in nearby Aguas Calientes and 670 more on the Inca Trail, a narrow Andean pathway up to Machu Picchu that takes four days to complete and which was cut in several places by landslides."