January 30th- We arrive in Cusco!

30/01/08

After what felt like a secret mission through the dark Amazon night, and some minor flight delays in Lima we arrived in Cusco! Why did it feel like a secret mission leaving our home away from home on the Tahuayo? Well, we left at 1:30am on a boat to travel to Iquitos in order to make our early morning flight (we needed to be at the airport by 7:30am to check in). The Amazon is not a river to be boated lightly and we were all kept awake by the bumps and swales that rocked the boat as we traveled through the dark, humid night. However we arrived safely with our wonderful guides Christian, Orlando and Dolly still at our sides. In fact Christian stayed with Ben and I right up until we walked through the security gate! We will miss him so much while in Cusco! If you ever get to read this blog, "Hola Christian!!". The flights were pretty uneventful although we almost missed our flight out of Lima to Cusco, because first of all it was delayed, which was no big deal, but then I swear they never announced that the now delayed flight was boarding and if Ben hadn't noticed people milling around saying they were taking a shuttle to the plane sitting on the runway waiting to take them to Cusco we probably would have missed the flight! Arrggghh! But, we managed to make it safe and sound!

Cusco is lovely. It has a very European old world feel to it, and there are a lot of Americans and Europeans (maybe that is why! :) and lots of folks trying to sale you stuff everywhere you go! We had a whirlwind tour of the City and some of the Inca ruins today, the Cathedral, Sacsahuaman, Qorikancha, etc. Unfortunately we were pretty out of it having been awake for over 24 hours and suffering from a bit of altitude sickness so we will be re-visiting some of these sites on out day "off". In fact, we were so goofy when we got off to the plane and to our hotel, that we forgot the camera when we went sight-seeing, so no pictures from today!! Sorry!