A long trip

November 20, 2013

El Tuco Hotel, Cusco

It is 8 in the morning, and ever since I first awoke at five the din of traffic has been increasing. So much of the communication between drivers in South America consists of using the horn: short little warnings to pedestrians standing close to the road, ready to cross, invitations to other drivers to slip into a gap – or warning to keep them in their lane. All of this horn honking is mixed with engine noise, voices shouting to each other, brakes screeching, someone banging on metal, and, strangely, the sound of a flute drifting by for a moment. We are back in South America, there is no doubt!

It was a long journey to get here, and I'm still a bit mixed up with my timing. Our flight to Toronto left from Edmonton at eight on Monday morning, which meant leaving for the airport at five since road conditions were still not perfect. For once, there was no delay, either in Edmonton or Toronto, and we landed in Lima at midnight, even a bit ahead of schedule so that we had to wait for a gate. The immigration procedures went smoothly, and nobody objected to anything in our luggage at customs. All we had to do now was wait ...

We weren't much interested in exploring Lima at this stage and had decided to leave for Cusco right from the airport. Our flight with Star Peru, a small local airline, was due to leave at six-thirty on Tuesday morning, and with check-in two hours earlier we weren't much concerned about the few hours wait in between. Shortly before we left on our trip, however, we got an email from Star Peru: that flight had been cancelled, and we were now due to leave at 8:30 instead. What's a couple of hours more, we thought; that, too, shall pass.

In retrospect it would have been wise to book a hotel for those few hours in between, if only to get off our feet: waiting at an airport for eight hours is not very conducive to rest. We caught short naps, head rested on arms on a table, walked back and forth along the airport building and the parking lot several times in the pleasantly warm, humid night air, had a coffee, a bite to eat, and finally were on the last leg of the trip. 

We boarded the older plane with room for about a hundred people, most of them Peruvian, and were treated to not only non-alcoholic drinks, but even a bun and a muffin for the one-hour flight, which was more service than we received on the four-hour flight from Edmonton to Toronto. The weather was clear, and we had an excellent view of the Andes from our window seat, even though we sat on the 'wrong' (the right) side of the plane. The left side would have allowed even more awesome vistas of this enormous mountain range with its ice-capped peaks. A friendly airline employee waved us over for some especially spectacular scenery. For the first while after we left Lima there was hardly any habitation, but later we saw villages perched, seemingly, on mountain tops, and the landscape greened up a little from the forbidding barrenness we passed over in the beginning. 

The descent was quick, the plane nosing its way through the mountains into the valley, with a smooth landing. Travel along the runway reminded us a bit of the bus driving we had experienced in other South American countries: the pilot was in a hurry to get from and to the gate, it seemed, and didn't even slow down much to take the curves.

I had arranged a pick up at the airport, and true to his promise Coco, the hotel owner, awaited us, waving a sign with 'Susanne Von'. :)  We got into a waiting taxi, and within a few minutes arrived at the hotel 'El Tuco' ('The Owl'), about six blocks away from the center of Cusco. We had chosen this hotel mostly because of its great reviews by other travellers: it was supposed to be clean, far enough removed from the party scene closer to downtown, safe and with friendly, English speaking service. We found all of that confirmed. The room is simple, but has all we need, and after many hours of sleep through yesterday evening and tonight, fortified by a good breakfast, we will soon be ready to see what more Cusco has to offer. Our walk yesterday led us through part of the historic downtown core with its interesting buildings and inviting 'Plaza de Armas'. 

A small plaza not far from the town centre