Arriving In South America

After nearly a full day of travel, we arrived at Lima airport at 10 pm. The plan was to sleep at the airport and catch a 6 am flight to Cusco with Peruvian Airlines.

I should point out that booking flights within Peru online is a small nightmare. After having done some research, I expected to pay somewhere around $50-70 for a domestic flight. It turns out that these fares are now only available to Peruvians and a hefty $180 foreigner-fee is applied if you can't show proof of Peruvian-ness. There are non-Peruvian fares ($350-ish), but they're typically higher than the Peruvian fare even after paying the foreigner-fee. Not to worry though, Peruvian Airlines offers a much more reasonable price of ~$100 with no strings attached.

Our flight was repeatedly delayed due to bad weather, which lasted about 3 hours when it was all said and done. Initially I was going to gripe about the Peruvian Airlines, but I think I was just sour over the unknown wait time and the rapidly spoken Spanish flight announcements that weren't repeated in English (PA was the only airline this was true for -- but maybe it's my own fault for being a gringo). After arriving in Cusco and having no bad experiences apart from the flight delay, I was in a cheerier mood.

[picture of our hotel]

We settled into a classy place that had been recommended to us. Since Cusco is higher than 3300m, altitude sickness, also known by the menacing Spanish name: serroche (sounds like ceviche), is a real concern. Being sensible, and generally less successful at sleeping on planes, Amy decided to nap. Being an idiot jubilant, I wandered the streets, running, jumping, plundering the hilly streets for its delicious treats. Guess who ended up succumbing to the dreaded air-thief, serroche?

Both of us!

Yes, the joys of nausea, headaches, and physical exhaustion belonged to both of us. Initially I caved and tried to get oxygen from the hotel staff, but they were closed. In the morning I felt a bit better and Amy hit the oxygen. In short: I'm the winner.

Today we opted for a humbler approach: massages, plenty of liquids, naps, and a blogpost.