Cusco

This is a picture of the departures from the Lima airport.  Demorado means delayed. Later most of these flights were cancelled.

We finally made it to Cusco! We were seven hours delayed coming from Lima, which made our total trip time over 31 (sleepless) hours. After spending the night in the Lima airport, our flight out of Lima was delayed, then delayed again, then cancelled! They rebooked us all onto a different flight leaving an hour after (now 3 hours after our original flight). Then the new flight was delayed several times. Lima was fogged in so every flight that morning was cancelled or delayed.  Some flights were just plain cancelled and the passengers were told to go get their baggage, so despite it all we felt lucky that we were only delayed. Unfortunately, despite being totally exhausted, we couldn’t sleep during all those hours because every half hour they would announce something different, reissue tickets, or change gates, so we had to be somewhat alert.

We met a few other travelers from the US who were stranded with us and a woman from Columbia and another from Zimbabwe. The woman from Columbia showed us how to use the payphones and we called and our pickup at Lima went smoothly.

They brought us to the house where we are staying. We each have our own room in the upstairs, and Senora gave us a nice meal with chicken, potatoes, and a salad made from avocado, tomato, and cucumber. She also served a really good tea drink made from purple corn, spices, vanilla, pineapple, and another exotic fruit we didn’t recognize.

After about a half hour of rest, we walked a half hour to our school for orientation.  We definitely could feel the altitude walking fast to get there on time, several uphills, and carrying the laptop (pretty heavy). The school led us on a walking tour of several of the main squares, pointed out good shops, and the museums and churches. The other students we met were from the Netherlands (4 or 5) and one from Tennessee. They all decided to go to a bar afterwards to socialize. We decided we were too tired (and too underage!) and walked home instead. We debated drinking our mate de coca to help with the altitude, but decided we really didn’t want a stimulant right before bed. We are exhausted and will start our class at 8am tomorrow morning.