My newest adventure has been traveling down south to Peru with my older brother for a trip of a lifetime. Our itinerary includes time in the Andes highlands, a two-day excursion to Macchu Picchu, and a trip into the Amazon rainforest where we get to fish for pirañas and visit a village shaman.
Currently we are approaching our third night in the country, and we JUST were reunited with our luggage about an hour ago. Our journey here was all but easy, yet we kept (pretty) good attitudes and made it to our destination in one piece.
The troubles began while we were still in Austin. We arrived at the airport plenty early, and made it through check-in and security in under 10 minutes, which is a personal record of mine. Our plane arrived about 10 minutes late, so we were 10 minutes late to board, but we were still fine to take off on time. Once the plane was fully loaded, however, the pilot's voice came over the speaker and announced that our plane had been over fueled and had too much fuel in it to be able to safely land in Houston, where we were to make our connection to Lima. He said that he hoped it wouldn't be more than a 15 minute delay, but 15 minutes later he announced that there were no trucks available in the airport to use to de-fuel the plane, and that they would have to call one over. Long story short, we didn't take off for Houston until an hour after we were supposed to leave, which was about the time we had on our original tickets in Houston to make the transfer.
When we arrived in Houston we definitely missed our connection, so we visited Customer Service for United and they re-routed us onto a plane that went to San Salvador in El Salvador. The flight was so much more annoying than our scheduled one, in that it didn't include dinner, movies or drinks when our other did. In addition to the downgrade on travel, we also only had 20 minutes between when our plane landed in San Salvador to when our next plane departed for Lima, which added a lot of stress to the process. However, miraculously we made it onto both flights in time and arrived in Lima at 1:46 in the morning, only about 3 and a half hours after our planned arrival. Unfortunately, although we arrived our bags did not. The whole thing was complicated by the fact that we had another flight to Cusco at 9:45 the next morning, so it would be a challenge for our bags to follow us to our destination.
After sorting it out with the airline, we arrived at the airport hotel at 2:15 a.m., for four and a half hours of sleep before heading back to the airport to sort out tickets. My flights were transferred from a previously booked ticket, but unfortunately the transfer was never completed before we left, so it took us about an hour and a half to settle the transfer with a bit of an up charge before we could advance forward to our next flight - with 10 minutes to spare! The last extremely comical thing in our series of unfortunate events to occur was the fact that the ticket desk put my brother and I on SEPARATE flights to Cusco, and Witt realized he had a different flight number just 20 minutes before his flight departed, so he was able to hop on to the plane during the last call for boarding. I got on mine at the same time, and we both arrived in Cusco within 10 minutes of each other. After all of that travel craziness, things have been running much more smoothly. Hallelujah.
We arrived at our hotel at about 10:30 a.m., and our escort to the hotel laid out the plan for us for the next couple of days. Our first tour was to begin at 1:15, so I took some time to shop at a market for a sweater to wear during the day. Since we're in the Andes in the Peruvian winter, I wasn't going to be able to cut it with my T-shirt I left Austin in. The market was absolutely wonderful. Witt took a nap, so I went out on my own and found a great little spot just up the street from our hotel. There were many stalls full of beautiful craftwork. I found a sweater that looked like the right fit and purchased it (speaking spanish) from a very kind old man. He tempted me into a scarf as well - and both will be great additions to my wardrobe even back home.
Our tour yesterday was awesome. We went on the "Cusco City Tour" with our guide, Miheil (my spelling is certainly off, but its a spanish version of Michael). The tour took us to Basilica Catedral, Qorikancha, Tamnomachay, Q'engo, and Saqsayhuaman. The Cathedral contained a lot of the history of the area after the Spanish invasion, and the other sites were all Incan towns or sites. Qorikancha was a bit of a hybrid of the two, as it was once an Incan temple but was converted to a church when the Dominican Friars came to Peru. Everywhere was breathtaking, and it was incredible to witness such a different type of ancient history than what I've seen in other parts of the world. It may be the only one where I am convinced that they were smarter than we are now.
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| Basilica Catedral |
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| Qorikancha |
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| Examples of Incan stone building - They built without cement or iron rods! |
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| Otherwise known as "Sexy Woman" - an Incan site where coming of age festivals were held. |
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| Witt and I in front of a 125 ton rock at Saqsaywaman |
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| A view of Cusco from the highlands |
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| Obligatory |
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| Tambomachay |
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| Pukapukara |
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| Learning about the difference between real Alpaca goods and synthetics |
We got back to the hotel around 7 p.m. last night, and after a quick dinner we were asleep by 8 after such a packed day on so little sleep. We woke up this morning at 7 and had a great breakfast at the hotel that included the blackest coffee Witt had ever had (I'm still debating whether its true for me too), house hot chocolate, and tons of incredible fruits. At 8 we were picked up for our day tour that took us outside of Cusco and to the Sacred Valley, a massive old Incan town built by the 10th emperor. Our site seeing included Pisac, Ollantaytambo, and Chinchero. In addition to visiting the old Incan ruins, we also were given lessons on the silver craft of the locals and how they make their wool and alpaca clothing. The silver lesson was really cool, and we saw all of the raw materials they used to make their beautiful pieces of work. Most of their stone came from different types of shells from the coast, but they also had stones that were found in the region or from Brazil. The wool spinning lesson was at the end of the day. The lady first demonstrated to us how they washed the wool using a natural root soap. Next, she showed us how they dyed it with natural dyes created from flowers, corn, lime, and white stuff found on cactuses. Finally, she showed us how they spun the wool and exhibited some of the final products, detailing the symbolism of the patterns. We shopped for a bit after, and Witt picked up a very nice sweater. We made it home pretty early, so we headed up the street from our hotel to find food for dinner, and ended up at a completely empty pizza place. It was awesome. The price was good, the pizza was delicious, and the restaurant was playing Letters to Juliet on the TV in spanish, and since it's one of my all-time favorite chick flicks the waitress and I bonded over our love of the movie.
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| The Sacred Valley |
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| Pisac |
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| Ollantaytambo |
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| All of the different natural dyes |
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| Learning about the wool craft |
Tomorrow we depart for Machu Picchu, and I couldn't be more excited. We finally have our luggage so I can wear hiking boots and warm clothes. All is good in the world.
P.S. Witt recommended giving a shout out to "Johnny Cash," the street artists outside of our hotel who is also probably the most persistent sales man we've ever met. Every single time we have left the hotel entrance he has been outside to greet us and show us his works. It's impressive.
