Peru and Galapagos October 2016

 The streets of Cusco

 Brian in a restaurant

 Melissa in a restaurant and a small child entertaining us across the street

 Traditional clothing with baby goats and the stairway of Hell for altitude training

 Chilly evening in Cusco
Square and the succulent guinea pig for dinner

Melissa, Jim and Brian at dinner....yummy guinea pig!

Peru and Galapagos October 2016

What an incredible trip!  Greg and I began the trip to Peru from Miami where we boarded a Latam airlines plane at 2:45am with non-stop to Lima, Peru.  Great flight with nice service.  Too bad we both slept most of the way!  In Lima, we had to grab our bags to go thru customs then recheck them to continue on to Cusco, Peru.  A couple hours layover in Lima, enough time to get some breakfast (it was probably close to 6:30 or 7am by then).  Flight to Cusco was short and uneventful.  Greg said he could definitely tell the elevation was high just walking through the airport.  We believed we were at 9000 feet but I just checked the internet and elevation for Cusco is listed at 11,000 feet (it's on the internet so it must be true)!  

We arrived at our hotel around 12:30pm (Rumi Punku) where our traveling companions Jim and Melissa Anderson, and our sons Brian and Ian, were already there.  The 4 of them were still sleeping from their all-night trip from Anchorage.  We all met up at 5 to explore the town.  Our hotel was within walking distance to the main square with lots of shops and restaurants and churches and museums!  Walking around was part of our "acclimation" process.  It was a struggle to breathe at times.  Dinner was at a local restaurant with traditional meat and fish dishes.  Nothing unusual about the first night's dinner.

Brian in front of cathedral

Melissa, Jim and Greg with local vendors

We all had a great night's sleep and met up for breakfast on Day 2 (Oct 20) at 7am.  Rumi Punku hotel has a wonderful buffet breakfast (I can't remember if we had to pay extra for it..) with cold cereals, hot egg dishes (a different one each day), lots of fruits, breads, meats, cheeses.  The coffee was rich and hot!  Brian not only would eat the buffet items, he also had the cook make him 4 eggs over-easy each morning.  The first morning they asked if it was for 2 people...."um...no....just me".  The 2nd morning he was asked again if it was for 2 people, by the 3rd morning they knew it was for only him!

Most of this morning we spent walking all over Cusco looking for our tour company (LlamaPath) for instructions on our upcoming hike.  We found one of their offices which happened NOT to be the one we needed to be at but while there we signed up for a tour of the Sacred Valley for the next day.  We were directed back to the other office which was on the other side of the area of town where we are staying.  We had hiked all over that area earlier and had no luck finding them.  We found them the next time only because we were walking on the other side of the street and could see their sign.  We couldn't see the sign above their door when we were on the same side of the street!