Anne Drops the Dead Weight

As readers of this blog may have gathered, Anne is pulling around a lot of dead weight (mostly in the form of Mark).  But every once in a while, she breaks free and goes off on her own.  One of these days occurred in Peru.  While Mark and the HBomb waited for KP and Jo Jo at the hotel in Ollantaytumbo, Anne hopped the train and went to Machu Picchu unencumbered.

How does visiting Machu Picchu without Mark and the HBomb differ from visiting it with them?  Well, first of all, there are a lot fewer clouds without Mark and HBomb around.  Anne ended up hiking Machu Picchu on a perfectly clear day.

Eagle-eyed viewers might also notice that visiting Machu Picchu without Mark and HBomb involves some slightly different views.  This is because Anne decided to do something that Mark, despite his well-known affinity for hiking, decided not to do: hike Huayna Picchu.  What is Huayna Picchu?  This is:

Huayna Picchu, or "young mountain" overlooks the ruins at Machu Picchu.  Hiking it is limited to 400 people per day.  And it is not the easiest hike in the world.  For one thing, it is pretty steep:

And it's not just that, there are also some tight quarters before you get to the summit.

Although Anne passes through it with ease, Mark realizes that he probably would still be stuck in this passage if he had tried to climb Huayna Picchu.

So far, we have established that when Anne was on her own, the day was brighter and sunnier, the hikes were longer and more impressive.  What else was different between the visit of the whole team and Anne's solo visit?

As you might expect, the majority of Anne's pix contain HBomb when he is around.  When he's not, she takes pictures of llamas and alpacas, obviously.