Quik Thinking

In the morning we caught a flight to Lima, for which I was finally forced to check my umbrella. Lima was a lot warmer than Cusco but not as pretty, although as a large metropolis filled with regular people it felt more "real". I was surprised to see that Scotiabank has a substantial presence in Lima! Sadly, the beach has pebbles instead of sand. But we were able to find outstanding fish and chicken dishes to eat. The traffic is pretty chaotic and some cabbies are just nuts! In the evening we met up with Michal's friend Heidi, who lives in Peru, and one of her coworkers (Aaron) for dinner and then hit up a club.

The next morning Aaron met us at our hostel and we all took a bus to the national museum. The bus system in Lima bears describing. First off, it's not actually one system at all; instead of a single municipally run transit authority, there are several bus companies that run buses along the same routes in competition with each other. It's a lot like Karachi, except nobody hangs off the sides of buses. Unfortunately, it was nearly always too hard to figure out which bus would get us where we wanted to go. I missed being able to rely upon Google Transit.

At the museum we checked out the exhibition about the Shining Path, a Peruvian terrorist group that caused the death of 69,000 people over the course of 2 decades. We only spent an hour at the museum because it was free and we soon grew hungry. After lunch we took a cab downtown and wandered about for a while, soaking in the atmosphere. I loved the promenade so much that I could see myself living in Lima if only I spoke Spanish. As we were leaving, we ran across the wedding ceremony of somebody pretty high up in the Peruvian navy. It had taken up most of the Plaza de Armas and some of the soldiers were taking pics with anybody who wanted.

Upon leaving Aguas Calientes we discovered to our delight that we'd been given seats on the fancy train car. Not only did we have enormous plush chairs but there was a masked dancer to entertain us. On the down side, this train took us only halfway to Cusco so we had to take a cab the rest of the way. During the ride we saw these strange rickshaws that looked like they'd been built out of motorcycles.

When we arrived in Cusco, it was raining heavily and Michal was feeling ill so we called her a doctor. The doctor diagnosed her with bronchitis and sent her to a nearby clinic in an ambulance for an x-ray and a blood test before giving her antibiotics. Fortunately, all of this cost her only $100. Later that night JM & I went to check out an interesting bar while Michal rested. I thought it was kinda overpriced but the decor was pretty impressive so we took some great shots of the props.

Michal had been in charge of setting her alarm to wake us up and, sure enough, I was woken up early the next morning by the sound of it. What we didn't realize for about half an hour, however, was that her phone was still set to Bolivian time, which is an hour ahead of Peruvian time. It was annoying to have been woken up so unnecessarily early but at least we hadn't woken up an hour late.

When we left our hostel it was pouring rain and there was already a long queue at the pickup spot so we waited for half an hour while the rain crashed down around us. I'd expected that the buses wouldn't actually leave on time but they ended up being surprisingly punctual. The ride to Machu Picchu took us up some treacherous mountain roads but treated us to scenic views in exchange. After getting to the site, we waiting in another queue to get in, while I ate four of the sandwiches our hostel owners had graciously prepared for us and we acquired a tour guide.

The ruins themselves were spectacular and even the rain that haunted our first couple of hours could not diminish the experience much. After our tour ended, we left the site to buy outrageously priced drinks and food, wishing that we'd brought more water with us. Then we returned for a more free-form exploration of the ruins. At one point a few llamas showed up and defecated right in front of us. Good times, indeed. Although we'd originally expected to stick around until late afternoon, we were so exhausted by noon that we hopped on the next bus back to Aguas Calientes.

We'd also been planning to return to Cusco late the next day but, since Aguas Calientes doesn't have a whole lot to do, we decided to leave in the morning instead. Changing our tickets wasn't too hard and after getting that out of the way we retired to our room to relax while felines and canines crashed down around us in watery form.

While Cusco is the closest major city to Machu Picchu, it's still too far to make a day trip there; for that we had to take a train to a little tourist-trap of a town called Aguas Calientes, whose sole purpose is providing tourists with a base from which to explore the ruins.

In the morning we rose bright an early to catch a 7:42 train to Aguas Calientes. During the trip our train actually went down the wrong track at one point and had to back up to switch tracks, which I'd never before experienced. Three hours later we arrived in Aguas Calientes and eventually found our hostel. Unlike the other hostel rooms we're shared so far, this one had neither Internet access nor a TV. I was glad to not have the TV but I did miss having Internet access.

After getting settled in, we went out for lunch. I finally managed to eat alpaca, which I'm pleased to report does not taste just like beef or any other meat I've had before. The flesh was very tender and I enjoyed it tremendously. It began raining while we were at the restaurant so we busted out some rain gear and set off to purchase tickets for Machu Picchu at 2pm, which is when they go on sale. Incredibly, it took over 20 minutes for the 2 guys at the ticket sales booth to get around to selling us our tickets, despite there being nobody else around and this being their primary responsibility! They also claimed not to have any change, just like nearly every other sales staff we've encountered in Peru. You'd think that any place accepting only cash would make a point of having plenty of change on hand...

Following a brief pit stop at our hostel, JM and I went to the hot springs. Although these ones were a lot smaller than those in Budapest, they did have one neat feature: a gravel-covered floor that felt pleasant to walk on. Once we were done with the hot springs, it was time for dinner, for which we patronized a French Peruvian restaurant that wowed us with its menu and presentation. We didn't do much else after dinner because we needed to catch a bus to Machu Picchu at 5:30 in the morning.

After leaving Bolivia, our first stop in Peru was Cusco. Our guide book had warned us about elevation sickness in Cusco with its 3400m elevation but after spending over 6 hours at El Alto airport, which is at 4000m, Cusco felt like a welcome change. Continuing our streak of ignoring the guide book, we took a unofficial taxi to our hostel to save 5 soles ($2) between the 3 of us. After dumping our bags at the hostel we took a walk through town to see the sights. I noticed, to my surprise, that all the stray dogs in Cusco are very chill and just ignore tourists instead of hounding them for attention or food. When we began feeling hungry we had dinner at a vegetarian-friendly restaurant called Greens that had amazing food.

Thus sated, we returned to the hostel to shower and rest for a while before going to check out the local nightlife. Perhaps because it was a Sunday night, not much seemed to be going on. We ended up at a little club playing reggaeton and crowded by Argentineans smoking while they danced, taking breaks only to chant slogans villianizing Evo Morales, the populist president of Bolivia.

Despite having gone to bed quite late, I found myself awake rather early the next morning so I went to the living room and tried to use the hostel's wifi but it proved to be prohibitively flakey. While I was doing that a gorgeous woman walked in and inquired about brekki. I had forgotten that the hostel served brekki but I decided to join her and we got to talking. She was also a chronic traveller and we got along really well but she had to check out that morning and was stressed out about finding another hostel for her and her travel buddy. I regret not asking them to join us for dinner.

When the girls finally awoke we hit the town again for the first international hat brunch. The food was delicious and we polished off every last scrap the brought us, even though we were stuffed after that. After returning to the hostel and resting for a bit, we took a taxi to visit the four Inca ruins outside Cusco. That took a few hours but it was a fascinating experience, even without a tour guide. In the evening we had a mediocre dinner followed by a rousing game of Pictionary and then retired for the night.