Saturday, 02 May 2009

• Getting There Is Half the Fun, Right?

  Greetings from Cuzco, Peru!

  The first leg of the trip was kind of a bear. Some of the travel info that I read up on prior to the trip mentioned to be patient.  Boy, they weren`t kidding.

  It started off inauspiciously enough. I left DC around the time that I was supposed to and got into Miami. Fortunately for me, the gate for my flight to Lima was five gates down from where I disembarked. (W00T!)

  Things went a little south when it came time to board the plane for Lima. The plane`s Captain decided to switch to an identical plane, because the plane we were supposed to use to go to Lima had a malfunction during landing. Understandably, the Captain had reservations about using that plane. So everyone on the flight made a mass exodus to a different concourse in the terminal to reach the plane that we were going to use for our flight. By the time everyone was on board and the plane took off, it was about 1:30 in the morning (we were supposed to leave Miami around 11:30 at night).

  The flight was going pretty smoothly when at about 4:30 - 5:00 in the morning the Captain gets on and says that due to weather conditions (heavy fog) in Lima, the International Airport in Lima was closed and we would have to divert to Guayaquil, Ecuador. So we landed in Guayaquil around 5:30 in the morning.  We spent a couple hours on the plane on the tarmac before we were finally offloaded and sent to the terminal to chill. So we got to the terminal and hung out with other passengers who were stuck trying to get into Lima. About an hour later, we were given permission to re-board the flight and head on Lima. Once we got back on the plane, we sat for another hour to hour and a half because the Tug that was supposed to get the plane starting to move broke down and they had to find another Tug to replace it. Fortunately, one was found and our plane was in the air.

  When I finally arrived in Lima (around noon), the hotel I was staying in was fortunately literally across the street from the airport. I checked in, went up to my room and promptly crashed.  I had planned to go to the Miraflores section of Lima and grab dinner, but since I had been up since 5:45 the previous morning, all I wanted to do was sleep.

  The next morning, I got up, got cleaned up and dressed to catch the plane for Cuzco. It was, for lack of a better term, batshit nuts in the terminal. Apparently the computers for the Airline I was flying (LAN) were on the fritz, so I was unable to check in automatically. Fortunately, I was able to make the plane on time and made it to Cuzco with out a hitch. After getting checked in to my hotel, I walked around a little bit to get acclimated to the high altitude (Cuzco is at 11,000+ feet) and grabbed a small lunch before coming back to relax for a bit.

  I haven`t taken any pictures as yet, but that will be coming tomorrow with the city tour and to visit Sacsahuayman.

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