Day #83 - Lima to Cusco. Peru

Cusco, Peru

Cusco - central square

Baby lamb - Ballycroy reminders

Cusco - impressive

Liam & Kim

Saturday, June 5th

This day starts out in the air on a 5hr, 10min flight from Miami to Lima, Peru. The flight went smooth. I watched the movie Invictus and read some of Digital Fortress (my new book by Dan Brown). All 4 of us were separated on this flight. No worries - time to relax.

We get into Lima. Local time is actually the same as central standard time in the US. It's 4:15am. By now, I'm starting to really get tired. We're about 20 hours into non-stop travelling. We get through customs and passport control. We make our way to baggage claim - as you have to pick up your bags at the first point of entry on an international flight. This is where the tides changed for me. I was happy and dealing with things until we find out that our bags were not there.

I'd be OK with our bags being lost, it's just the way we had to check them that makes me very uneasy. With 2 different airlines in the picture - who knows what will happen. We had to fill out a bunch of paperwork for our bags. We give them our address where we'll be staying in Cusco. We'll be there for 3 nights, so things might work out.

We were met at this point by our guide for the trip - Andes Adventures. Our guide helped us get through the airport taxes and get confirmation of our Lima to Cusco flight. This flight departed at 8:15am. We had about a 3 hour layover in Lima.

We staggered around the airport, ate some breakfast, and basically laid out on the chairs with the other zombies at the airport. So, between the hours of 4:30am - 8:15am -- we talked some, staired into the distance more, all the while wondering if we'll ever see our bags again.

Our flight departs on time to Cusco. We arrive an hour later at an elevation of 11,400ft. Our bodies are instantly given the task to acclimitize to some severe elevations. We got off the plane, no bags to get, find our Andes driver, and make our way to the hotel. A great hotel by the way. We then meet our main guide for the trip - Devy. We sit and enjoy some tea as he briefs us for the day. We're basically given a pass to do our own thing all day.

I hit the bed about 10am and got up about 3pm. We all 4 meet up and catch some late lunch/dinner. After eating, we walked around Cusco breifly. We're all amazed at the makeup of the town. Much nicer and refined than I had anticipated. Cusco has some impressive buildings with a pretty neat central square. We weren't feeling great, so we headed back to the hotel. We pondered the day's events over more tea. Talked it over with Devy some more, then called it an early night.

I'm writing this blog now around 9pm on Saturday night. I hope I'm able to sleep tonight. The rest of the tour group will be coming in tomorrow. We have an extra day acclimatizing - thankful for it.