Machu Picchu, Peru.

Washington State Wire senior editor Jim Boldt has just flown home from his November vacation — and boy are his arms tired. Here he informs his enquiring audience of what he found more intriguing than a Boeing special session and two days of committee hearings.

Although it was only 21 days away, it is great to get home after 18 take-offs and landings, visits to all cultural sites in the Inka Sacred Valley and a final run “down” to Machu Picchu. Cusco is at 11,200 feet and Machu Picchu relieves the lungs and stomach with a comfortable 8,200 foot altitude. This picture is of a magical, misty morning at the famous sight as the sun burst through the “Valley of the Sun” and marked the end of the Andes and the beginning of our run to Puerto Maldonado near the headwaters of the Amazon. Forty minutes of a motion-picture-like rain-swollen-brown-river wooden-skiff cruise placed us at a lodge somewhere in Southern Peru where monkeys of all types sang night and day, ran through the trees, and usually avoided the sloths. Snakes, spiders and ‘gators played amid a backdrop of rainbow-colored birds and butterflies. The butterflies? I think it was a Democrat caucus of butterflies. They were quiet, diverse and loud, and none seemed to be talking directly to each other. But they were vibrant.

— Jim Boldt

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