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Hostal Espana
Our room at Hostal Espana. I've had an amazing number of requests by people to keep another blog of our latest adventure... Huh! Didn't think anyone really read this stuff... Or maybe you guys are just being nice?!
Well, here we are in Peru. It was a pretty rocky start, but smoothed out quite nicely once we actually got out of Calgary. I stayed up until 1 AM yesterday cleaning and packing and got up at 3:30 AM to do some last minute stuff. Shane worked all night and finally came home at 4 AM to pack. We left our place at 5:30 AM. Our flight out of Calgary left on time and we got to Houston early! In addition, our flight out of Houston left on time and we got ot Lima early. All in all, quite impressed with Continental Airlines.
You would think that packing light would come very easy after having done a few overseas backpacking trips. Well, it's completely untrue. Packing for this trip has been a bit of a conundrum. Peruvian weather is based on altitude so we had to account for warm weather, cold weather, and rain... So, it looks like touque + sunhat, mitts + shorts, tank
tops + fleece, rain jacket + long underwear, etc, etc. Very odd.
Going through customs was relatively painless except for the long line-up. I had heard horror stories of having to ¨press the button¨before getting out of Lima airport. If it turns green, you are free to go. However, if it turns red, they do a full search of all our stuff and takes forever. Well, we got the RED button (so did the guy immediately in front of us). So I was expecting to have to go through this ordeal, but in actuality, they just put our bags through an X-ray machine and waved us on our way without so much as a second glance. Took all of 60 seconds. Not really sure what the big deal is.
The transfer to our hotel in Lima was late, but we eventually found him. Cesear took us to the Hostal Espana in central Lima. Fantastic little place with lots of character! We got a double room with a private bathroom for $45 soles (about $15 CAN). We slept like the dead then we were up at 7 AM for our 10 AM flight to Cusco on LAN. Cesear had
Amaru Hostal
Beautiful place! Highly recommended. told us that we should probably leave at 8 AM for the airport, but we thought that was overkill for a domestic flight. It was CHAOS at the airport. The line-up was huge (looked like it would take 3 hours to get through it - seriously there was like 300+ people in line). So while we were fretting in line, I decided to have a walk around. Luckily, I had checked-in for our flight via internet before leaving Canada and had printed off our boarding passes already ´cause there was a line for people who already had their boarding passes! So, it actually only took us like 20 minutes. Phew! Later found out that there was mayhem because there had been so many LAN flights cancelled due to the fog in Lima. Our flight left late at 10:45 vs. 10 AM, but we were happy with that since the lady sitting next to us was supposed to be on a 5:30 AM flight that had been cancelled.
The flight to Cusco was an hour and very picturesque. When I got off the plane, I thought that I would have some really problems with the altitude (11,000 ft) because I
Amaru Hostal
Drinking coca tea. suddenly felt very short of breath but it passed after about a minute. Haven´t had any other problems such as headache, nausea, fatigue so it seems like I am good to go! Shane is also not experiencing any problems.
Made it to our hotel at 12:30 PM which means we missed our pre-Amazon trip meeting at noon. Oh well. They said they would get our guide to get in contact with us. We are staying at the Amaru II hostal in Cusco. This place is GORGEOUS! Shane is quite anamoured with it. A double room with private bath + breakfast + hotel transfer from the airport set us back $30 US. When we got to the hotel, we were immediately offered some coca tea (yes, same plant that people make cocaine with) which is supposed to help with altitude sickness. It is sort of bitter tasting, but I quite like it - especially with heapings of sugar!
We did not do too much today so do not have a lot of exciting pictures to upload. We just ran a lot of errands in preparation for tomorrow. The exciting part of my day was that I tried ceviche for
Amaru Hostal
The courtyard at Amaru Hostal. supper - it is raw fish marinated in lime juice. Probably not a good idea since we are off for a 6 day trip to the Amazon tomorrow. We won´t be updating the blog until then. Hopefully, we´ll have lots of fantastic pictures to upload!
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