The Long Days of Travel

We live in Austin, so getting to Peru was a multi-step process. In the eve we headed out after work, we drove to San Antonio, about an hour and a half of driving.

We left our car at a friend’s house near the airport (thanks Kenny), stayed at a Hyatt near the airport (we stay at Hyatts a lot and have status there – they have good beds), then got up at horribly early in the AM, and headed to the airport to make sure we got there well in advance to deal with lines and delays.

We had booked a flight from S.A. through Mexico City with a 10 hour layover. The plan was that we would visit a museum in Mexico City during the layover, then go back to the airport and fly onward to Lima. When we got to the checkin counter, we found out that our flight had been cancelled. Apparently Interjet didn’t get enough people on the flight so they cancelled it, which didn’t seem to be a real surprise to the gate employees. Luckily they were great and worked with us to sort it out. Haley explained our original plan and the point in time where we had a contingent flight in Lima, and the agent got us on a flight to Guadalajara that could transfer to Mexico City’s to make a Mexico City -> Lima flight that would get us there in time for our Cusco flight from Lima. We were pretty grateful to the Interjet folks for doing extra to help us make a flight booked on LatAm for Lima-Cusco.

So it turned out that we didn’t enjoy a quick trip to Mexico City on the way to Lima. We spent time on layover in an airport in Guadalajara. We certainly weren’t about going sightseeing in Guadalajara on a lark, but we got some good Mexican food and I read the phrasebook and practiced some Spanish.

The ampersand in Spanish has a long I sound, so this place isn’t Deli and CIA, but something like Deliiicia.

We quickly transferred once we landed in Mexico City, scrambled through customs, and got on our next long, long leg to Cusco.

I secretly had hoped Doritos weren’t known outside the US, but alas, they were being served on a Mexican airline’s flight from Mexico City to Lima.

The main flight was on Interjet which is a Mexican airline, apparently is family owned, and probably gets all of it’s fleet used from other airlines. Their older jets do have nice leg room, and besides the cancellation we managed fine. They sometimes play in-flight entertainment on drop-down flat panels that are over some seats, though having flown on planes that still had ash trays, this is fine. Meals are not an option – bring snacks. They serve drinks, and they serve Pepsi products – no Mexican Coke, alas.

If you fly Interjet it would be a good idea to have at least a bit of working knowledge of basic Spanish. They are not a US airline. They are a Mexican airline with some US presence in Miami, San Antonio, Dallas, L.A., and Vegas, but mostly flying routes in Mexico, C. America, and S. America. They do repeat announcements in English usually, but there’s no saying whether the people working the gates outside the US will speak English.

At this point we’d been flying or sitting in airports for a more than a day, so we tried to get some sleep on the Mexico City-Lima flight. They showed a documentary about a Latin band that had a confusing number of lead singers – at least eight. They also showed old public domain cartoons and a Chaplin film.

We both did manage to get a little sleep before we landed in Lima. Once we got there we went through customs again, got our luggage, bought some currency at a bad exchange rate, and worked our way through the airport’s security again. Alas, I wore my hiking boots on the flight to save room – they have metal grommets that would trigger the detectors so I still had to take my shoes off outside the US.

Once we were back in the Lima airport we had a while before the flight so we went to an airport lounge. We both took showers, charged batteries, ate empanadas and lounge snacks, had a cappuccino from the fancy machine, and had some Inca Kola.

Inca Kola is a lemon verbena flavored soda popular in Peru. It’s really pretty good, though the fresh lime-ade many Peruvian restaurants serve is better.

The lounge time helped recuperate from having been strapped into a plane seat for hours. And then we were off to in a Peruvian airport finding the gate to get on a domestic flight from Lima to Cusco.

The LatAm flight to Cusco was uneventful and mercifully short comparatively. Since it was domestic we didn’t need to worry about customs, and the Cusco airport is tiny, so we were off the plane and picking up our bags quickly.

The first thing any new visitor to Cusco is going to notice is that the air is much thinner at 12,000 feet above sea level. We were both tired and oxygen starved, carrying our (overpacked) luggage around out of the gate added to the oxygen starvation. But there was a really big moth near the restrooms so that was cool.

It was on a wall, so nothing for perspective but the wing span was around 4-5 inches. Looks like an Ascalapha odorata, the black witch moth.

Once we landed in Cusco we had the choice of whether to visit a local animal rehab/rescue, Cochahuasi Animal Sanctuary, or to go straight to our lodging in Ollyantetambo. We were wiped out from travel and low O2, but decided to press on to the animal rehab since this was a chance to see some Andean Condors they’re rehabbing and preparing to release, and we weren’t going to let a small thing like the inability to take a small walk without wheezing and feeling drained stop us from visiting a wildlife rehab. Those people are doing work we love to see. Also they could arrange us getting a ride from the Cusco airport to their site, and then from there to Ollyantetambo, and the sanctuary would get some cut of that.

So we contacted the animal sanctuary, eventually a driver picked us up at the airport, and we took a long drive through Cusco to Cochahuasi.

next: Peru’s Biodiversity: A Unique Treasure