Category: Peru

Well there was a bit of a hiatus between this post on our trip to Peru and the last, thanks to the world wobbling around a lot due to COVID 19, but we have decided we should finish this, since Lima was really cool and worth remembering.

This is our post from the day before when we visited the Pantanos de Villa Wildlife Refuge.

On our third day after we ate breakfast we decided to revisit Bosque el Olivar (also called Parque el Olivar). It was walkable from the hotel in San Isidro and is a hotspot with ~50 species with many passerines very different than the shorebirds we’d been seeing. The area is a beautiful urban park to walk around in, heavily planted with olive trees.

The park is broken up with green, generally wooded blocks on the edges with larger sections as you head in, and has ponds and little fountains and gazebos and things. The weather was very nice when we were there, so we wandered along checking out the park and the bits of San Isidro we were in. The area has a lot of embassies and a few upscale boutique areas and a few restaurants and cafes that looked intriguing.

The area is home to a lot of species of birds. The eve before we looked up a checklist to refer to.

We found a few interesting birds right away.

There were a ton of vermillion flycatchers out. While to the locals they’re common and less interesting, I have only seen one once before (on my street – cool). They’re really beautiful little things and the ones in the park were fairly acclimated to people so they mostly ignored us so we could get a nice look at them.

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Lima has a population of melanistic vermillion flycatchers too. So cool!

I spotted a pacific parrotlet in the park, though it was gone by the time I got Haley. We saw a few species of parakeets in the park, and heard flocks of them squawking fairly often. The species in the park are not really native to Lima though they’re native to Peru.

The thing that made this area really amazing for us was the saffron finches. While they’re called “finches” they’re in the tanager family (like Darwin’s “finches”). They’re small, yellow, and very finch-y, though, so the name is understandable. We saw a number of flocks of 10-20 birds wandering through munching their way through the seeding grass. We sat quietly in the park near areas with a lot of dandelions and they hopped quite close as they picked their way through.

We sat around different spots in the park for hours watching saffron finches chomping away at dandelions, grass seeds, and things and I wandered to track down interesting bird calls and things.

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Since we were sitting a lot I managed to drop my phone. This was esp bad since it had a couple credit cards and my driver’s license in the case. I used ‘Find My Phone’ on Haley’s phone to track it and found it at a police kiosk on a nearby corner. After some delays and filing of papers and a slightly complicated Spanish conversation I got it back with the cards/license intact.

There were a lot more birds besides those, croaking ground doves, and other doves, pigeons, flycatchers, and things. This was our last day in Lima so we spent hours enjoying the park, then wandered back to the hotel which as about .5 km. visited the church near the park which was lovely and interesting.

Then we walked back to our hotel to start the long trip back home.

next: The Long Journey Home and Mexico City

We found a local bird guide in Lima to get us to and guide us around Pantanos de Villa.

Lima is a coastal city with cliffs along much of the coast. To the south of the city there are the Pantanos de Villa Wildlife Refuge, protected wetlands full of many species of shorebirds and huge numbers of birds, and a standard stop for birders. It’s a beautiful area and the city in the area was really interesting to watch as we drove to the site.

On the drive out we talked about birds we’d see in the park yesterday, about things to see in Lima, and how cool we found Peru. She also mentioned that she saw a Guayaquil squirrel near our hotel. They’re not native to Lima, but a population has been established. We spotted one in San Isidro the next day, and though it was camera shy, it was cool seeing a new mammal species.

Our first stop was an area where we could hire a park employee to take us out in a rowboat through the marshes. Paddling kept the boat pretty close to silent while we worked out way through some beautiful wetlands. These wild spaces that are teeming with life have a special feeling about them that’s hard to describe, though it verges on a certain sense of sacredness.

On the flight out I’d read Kenneth Graeme’s Wind in the Willows (a copy with E. H. Shepard’s illustrations). In that book, the meeting of Pan by Mole and Ratty was in the river full of reeds, a space full of verdant life and wonder in nature that is described wonderfully in the book, and here we were in just the kind of wild space fit for a literary nature god.

The boat got us in the middle of an amazing ecosystem, the reeds and water lettuce covered areas were lovely to be in the middle of, and there were a ton of birds.

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From the marsh we went to the beach.

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The beach was lovely and full of wildlife and full of many new bird species for us. While black skimmers are in the US, we’d never seen them before, and got a nice photo for showing the crazy beak on those things.

We also got more time with flamingos which was great.

When we were done at Pantanos de Villa we came back to the hotel. We were right next to Parque el Olivar in San Isidro which is a large urban park with a lot of birds and diversity of species. We got there in the eve so the light was fading but we saw some really cool birds.

We heard a lot of parakeets and enjoyed walking around the park. On the walk back to the hotel we stopped into Parroquia Nuestra Señora del Pilar for a minute. Old Catholic churches are fascinating as repositories of art and culture, whatever else you think about them.

From there we ate at a really good Preuvian criollo restaurant (and had amazing lime-ade) and made our way back to the Hyatt.

next: Lima Day Three Parque el Olivar 

We woke up in Lima. We still had a bit of sunburn, the bit of down time at Pisco had helped, but we were still processing all the things we’d been seeing. Penguin chicks! Flamingos! Llamas! The Andes! Sea Lions! I like forests and especially wet forests, but the dry coasts were very beautiful in their way. Lima’s an oasis built on the coast against really lovely cliffs.

On our first day we wanted to go out and see the city and local culture. We decided to visit the the Catacombs in the Basilica of San Fransisco which would put us in a good part of the city to explore by foot.

The basilica was lovely, esp. the woodwork around the entry. And it had a ton of pigeons.

The tour of the catacombs had a no photography policy.

While the basilica was beautiful and very fascinating, we respected their no photos policy for the interior of the basilica or the catacombs. The basilica has got a lot of beautiful neoclassical architecture, interesting art, amazing old hymnals and ancient books that were fascinating and lovely to behold. In the center of the building was a really beautiful, heavily planted courtyard. There we saw sparrows, more pigeons, and some West Peruvian doves (Zenaida meloda) that look and act very much like white-winged doves.

The church did some English tours of the catacombs. The catacombs are full of tens of thousands of skeletons with bones presented in various, sometimes artful ways, and were really interesting to visit, though we really enjoyed the tour through the church as well. I really found the giant, ancient songbooks in medieval notation and the huge library with a huge collection of centuries old books really striking, and the place is full of some really incredible painted ceramic tile work.

After we finished with the tour we sat for a bit in the entry to rest and I wound up talking to a guy who was a translator for the courts. He knew quite a number of languages and was really interesting to talk to, and we chatted in Spanish a bit. Then we headed out.

The first thing we really noticed was the power lines – amazing.

We ate at a local place near Parque de la Muralla. Trying the ‘limonade’ it was again lime-ade and amazing. From there we wandered to the Plaza de Armas.

The Plaza de Armas is a really lovely and interesting space in the middle of the historic center.

The whole area’s wonderful to walk around and see the buildings and monuments.

We stayed there until dark, visiting the Cathedral of Lima for a bit. We love visiting old Catholic churches to see the art and architecture. (Cathedrals are the seats of bishops so they’re big and typically very interesting spaces.) From the plaza we got a ride back to the hotel and got to bed.

next: Lima Day Two, Pantanos de Villa

We left Paracas and headed to the Doubletree in Pisco. The plan was to have a down day here relaxing after a lot of go days. That turned out to be a really good idea since we both forgot sunscreen before the kayaking and we were close enough to the Equator for that to be a big mistake. We both were sunburned so relaxing and staying in the shade for a bit sounded good.

The Doubletree was resort-style, so we couldn’t walk through the fun parts of Pisco, though this was fine for a recovery day. The resort was more upscale than I like, with expensive food and people who learn your name and refer to you by it at the desk.

Also they have art furniture.

We also managed to try a Pisco Sour here. These are really good for this kind of drink. I tried some straight Pisco and it’s not nearly as horrible as I expected. (I have a kid palate – alcohol has always just tasted vile to me). Pisco is a grape brandy, and the town of Pisco is a beach town in the middle of a desert which puzzled me. It turns out the drink is made in wine making regions elsewhere in Peru, but the original port it was all shipped from was Pisco, so the name came from there.

The staying in the shade didn’t last very long for me, because the resort was on the water and the shore had birds.

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We spent a day here recuperating, treating sunburn with aloe, and messing around looking at birds. I also saw rufous-collared sparrows on property and followed some around to get a good look.

While the Doubletree was fine for us since we were trying to stay in and recuperate, this place is really isolated from the more colorful and fun parts of Pisco and is more of an isolated resort than a base to visit Pisco. Pisco is a really cute, though very dusty, beach town with a lot of character that looks like a fun place to spend time in.

The next day we ate and had a leisurely morning, then checked out. We took a taxi to Pisco, to the Perú Bus station. We’d booked the bus from Pisco to Lima online which worked out fine. They stowed our luggage underneath for the ride.

I read some of the phrase book on the bus (still doing homework), and we watched films dubbed in Spanish with Spanish subtitles. Iron Man II is not a good film to learn Spanish from. Charlotte’s Web (2006) was ok. Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit was great.

We pulled into Lima around 7 PM, and got a taxi to the slightly over-fancy* Hyatt Centric in San Isidro, Lima, ate at the hotel’s restaurant (mushroom risotto), then got to bed.

* Any hotel where staff learn your name and then refer to you by it when they see you is way to fancy, and also somewhat distressing in the awkwardness that ensues. Hotels that use golf carts to get you to your room are too fancy. Hotels that have their own tailored pillow scent are cool for that, but also too fancy.

next: Lima Day One 

The next morning we got up, ate some breakfast which was very good, played with the dogs a bit, looked at shore birds and watched the Peruvian boobies dive. Anahi, Luis, and Pablo were all great hosts and we felt lucky to get the opportunity to hang out with them and talk about this beautiful place, dote on their adorable kids, and eat amazing food. The AirB&B listing is worth posting again since this was a highlight:

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/30707377

After lunch we headed out on kayaks, Haley and I shared a kayak, Luis had a kayak, and a friend of his with a background as a nature guide came along.

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After we we got back from kayaking, we ate a bit and prepped to go out on Luis’ boat.

Off the coast of Paracas National Park in Pisco Bay there are a number of islands very rich in bird and sea life that are called the Ballestas. These islands have huge colonies of thousands of birds, large sea lion colonies, and Humboldt penguin colonies.

There are tour boats that go out to some of the islands. We saw the tour boats – they were crowded, the captain’s itinerary is set in a fairly fixed course, and things wouldn’t be fun with a camera with a big lens. We went out to Isla Blanca which isn’t on the main tour boat itinerary so it’s quieter, has a sea lion colony, a penguin colony, and has a ton of birds. Having a private boat was great. We wanted to take a look at the sea caves, so we pulled up near them – they were cool sea caves. We took our time around the islands getting the boat in position to get nice views and photos.

We went along the coast of Pisco bay until we got to the Candelabra. The Candelabra is a huge geoglyph in the hillside similar to the Nasca lines. It has an unclear history. While there are ancient pottery shards that suggests it’s very old, the earliest account of it was by Eurpoean colonists, and little is really known about it. It might have been made as a navigation aid, since Isla Blanca is due north of the candelabra.

As we approached Isla Blanca we saw large numbers of terns, gulls, cormorants, and boobies.

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next: Pisco

We took a domestic flight from Cusco to Pisco and landed in a very dry place.

Off the coast the Humboldt Current runs up from Antarctica keeping the surface temps so low that there’s no evaporation. In the past 60 years this region has seen one day of rain (resulting in a catastrophe for Pisco). Near the coast there are a few tiny plants that subsist off dew, but there’s no rain, so there are no succulents/cactuses, etc.

The coast of the desert here is rich with life. On our drive in we spotted a group of bright pink Chilean Flamingos on the beach and tons of shorebirds. And the Ballesta Islands here are host to huge amounts of wildlife, including Humboldt Penguins.

While researching this area, Haley had found an Air B&B listing for a place inside the park on the beach that was a working scallop farm. We planned to take kayaks in Pisco bay to see the local birds, get close to flamingoes, and spend time in a really unique and amazing ecosystem, and arranged to take a boat out to see the islands.

This was a great decision – they’re an excellent AirB&B deal. The place had what amounted to an outhouse, electricity was limited primarily to solar panels, and we slept on an air mattress in a tent, but it got us right on the coast in the middle of an area rich in amazing wildlife.

On arriving we walked around the beach and spotted a lot of Peruvian boobies scanning and diving for fish which were fun to watch.

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Also there were a lot of American oystercatchers.

And there was a juvenile Chilean flamingo hanging out on the coast of the scallop farm.

We also saw Wilson’s plovers, curlews, sanderlings, greater yellowlegs, gulls, terns, Peruvian pelicans, and various cormorant species on a short walk.

Anahi and Luis were really awesome to hang out with. Great hosts, very thoughtful folks, and wonderful to get the chance to talk to. We talked about the local wildlife and ecology, and I finally tried to sort on the deal with Español and Castellano. We paid a bit extra for full board and were really glad we did, they were amazing cooks.

We looked up birds in a copy of Birds of Peru we ordered used online. Luis had a hardback of the same version. We used it through the trip, the illustrations are good, the maps helpful, and the layout standard enough to be easy to use. We’ve found traveling with a paper field guide covering an area works well since looking things up online in apps is much less reliable outside the US, at that point I had limited data on a Peruvian Claro plan, and we had serious battery limits.

The farm itself is a netted area off the shore where scallops are grown out in the rich waters. Luis’ father Pablo ran the scallop farm, and the ten dogs at the site were his – he told us all the dogs names. He didn’t speak much English, but we chatted in Spanish.

We walked along the coast, ate, played with dogs, checked out birds and shells and wildlife, and had a nice time talking to Anahi, Luis, and Pablo in the evening and eventually we went to bed.

next: Paracas Day Two and on to Pisco

We slept well, and the next morning we woke up in Casa Inka to the squawks of parakeets red-fronted parakeets screeching away in a nearby tree.

In the morning we were awake from the parakeets and roosters, went down those grueling stairs and had a nice breakfast – mostly eggs, fruit, cheese, and bread. We saw more rufous-collared sparrows, drank some more local tea, packed our O2 canister, and headed to the train station to visit Machu Picchu.

PeruRail runs this line. We booked tickets online, and boarding was easy. They run observation cars on the trains, the path is through the Sacred Valley, mostly alongside a river, and with tunnels and things – a nice ride and a beautiful space.

The mountains all along the Sacred Valley have patches that are terraced, sometimes miles long. This massive terraforming goes back to the Incas and it really was amazing to see how much the Incas had shaped this vast space. 

The train took us to Aguas Calientes, the town below Machu Picchu. Aguas Calientes has buses that run up to the archaeological site, or if you can climb the many horrible stairs in a long hike up to the site if you are young, acclimated to the height, and insane.

We strolled around Aguas Calientes which was an incredibly pretty place but we were O2 starved so we strolled very slowly. We checked out trains, looked around at birds and local sights, took breathing breaks, and bought our bus tickets to get up to Machu Picchu. There’s no way to order these online, bring your passport to the bus ticket office.

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Eventually we got on the bus and wound our way up the switchbacks to the site. We were dreading this part, since the air is thin at 8000 feet up, and Machu Picchu is a monument of stairs – so many hand carved, carefully laid stone stairs. Apparently the Incas loved cardio workouts.

Altitude sickness was a little worse than the previous day, but the O2 helped with Machu Picchu. We were tentative at first, but after a while we learned to use it before we felt the great burning thirst for air rather than in response to it. Machu Picchu is a fascinating place, a beautiful spot, and there were a lot of rufous-collared sparrows and swallows flitting around and occasional small brown mystery birds, and we spotted  some nice sized lizards and some brightly colored flash mystery birds. Some red, some yellow, a bit of blue on the body somewhere, then gone. We heard parrot/parakeet squawks in the distance at times.

We wandered around until we’d taken it in, and as we headed back peals of thunder hit, a light rain started, seeming like it was only going to get heavier. We had already been heading back so we made it onto the first bus back down before the crush from the rain and explored Aguas Calientes for a bit, changed the return time for our train ticket back to Ollantaytambo, and headed back. The train station had a decent sized garden that had a few birds flitting around with a few hummingbirds visiting.

By the time we got back to Ollantaytambo it was dark. We took a mini-taxi from the station back to the main square. These photos are surprisingly effective at capturing the feel of a ride in the local tiny death traps:

The main square is a really cool place. The town has been continuously inhabited since the 13th century, and while there are touristy things, this is a living old town with a lot of history and charm. It also was a last holdout of the Incan Empire against the Spanish. We ate pizza and fries and got ‘limonade’ that was really good lime-ade and took another mini-taxi back to the B&B where we got to bed.

The next morning we were awakened by the parakeets again (along with some roosters), spent a bit looking at the local hillside with ruins, birds, and interesting things. The folks at the B&B Inka Hotel were great through our stay, helped us arrange a taxi back to Cusco, and also packed a lunch for us for the drive.

We took a flight from Cusco to Pisco on LatAm, which went smoothly, then at Pisco we had a driver pick us up to take us to Paracas.

next: Paracas National Reserve 

On the drive out to Cochahuasi Animal Sanctuary we saw a lot of the fascinating world of the Andes. There were women tending to day to day life in their bowler hats and colorful skirts, and while we can’t really know what the world of the Incas was like, many are descendants of the Incas and there are some who still speak Quechua, the language of the Incan Empire and the place is rooted in that history.

Our driver knew some Quechua, and we chatted about that and about llamas and alpacas (domesticated animals that we saw off and on), and also vicuñas (the wild ancestor of the alpaca), and guanacos (wild ancestors of llamas). At times he saw vicunas in the hills, but no guanacos. I had hopes for seeing guanacos, but alas. 

Along the drive we saw rufous-collared sparrows a few times, turkey vultures, black vultures, and occasional swallows. We stopped in a spot to look at the scenery and saw rufous-collared sparrows.

While we were very tired it was great that we chose to visit the animal sanctuary. It was a way to get some time close to llamas and alpacas, and also see vicuñas, the national animal, which are a pre-domesticated camelid the alpaca descended from (no guanacos here, alas, those spitting wonders).

I somehow forgot to take any photos of the vicuña so we need to go back to Peru at some point.

We also saw the Peruvian Hairless Dog, a species that almost disappeared since while the Incas and other pre-hispanic people liked them, they really are not pretty dogs. Fascinating, though.

We saw a number of rufous-collared sparrows, and a lot of turkey vultures and black vultures, and a few small mystery birds, some really colorful and gone too quickly. Also we spotted what appears to be a band-tailed seed eater.

The sanctuary’s big attraction is the condors. The sanctuary has a lot of Andean animals that were from a pet trade or were injured and need care, but they do rehab and release some animals including Andean condors. Our timing for seeing Andean condors in the wild at Colca Canyon was not good, so this was a chance to see them.

We had a good time at the rehab/rescue, drank a local herbal tea that helps with altitude sickness, and a lady wandered off, found something she pulled from the ground that looked and smelled like parsley, and insisted I rub it on my forehead, which I did. While we both still felt tired and could still feel the lower oxygen, over time more blood was flowing and we managed a bit better with the altitude though doing anything exerting was likely to result in a lot of panting and gasping for air.

No one at the wildlife rehab spoke much English. We had contacted them while we were in the US to go over transit options and contacted them from the airport to send a driver out to get us from the airport (they offer this as a service, their rates were good, and whatever cut they get is going to the sanctuary). We arranged with them to get us a ride from there to Ollantetambo, which was a good 45min – an hour drive so the sanctuary would get a cut of the fare. I had the driver captive so I spoke to him to practice Spanish, talking about the Incas, local wildlife, and the local languages, and various things we’d spot while we drove along. He knew some Quechua, and was friendly and an interesting person to get to talk to.

The local Andean peoples are really fascinating to get to meet and talk to, really. This is a place where descendants of the pre-hispanic peoples still speak the language of the Incan empire. You can see the legacy of Spanish colonialism everywhere, but the ladies in their bowler hats and folks doing their thing raising alpacas out in the hills, they’re a very unique and fascinating people.

We got to Ollantetambo later in the day, and got to our AB&B, the Inca Hotel near cien ventanas. The address was not a street #, so mapping was… complicated… but we got to Ollantetambo.

At this point we had long days of travel, had landed in Cusco many hours earlier to much lower oxygen levels, had walked around the wildlife rehab center, and were wiped.

We checked in our B&B at the Inka Hotel which turned out to have a grueling three flights of stairs, and we were left huffing a lot, but we got our things situated, got unpacked and got into town right after sundown. The hosts at the B&B were nice and really helpful. They spoke very little English so it was good that I’d been prepping Spanish.

The electricity here is 220v. We’d checked our devices to make sure their transformers handled 220 and 110, and now that we had a real world test we found the USB chargers and all our things were fine.

The first thing we did was visit a pharmacy to get a canister of oxygen for Machu Picchu. We found another pharmacy where we bought a Peruvian SIM for my phone with enough data to last the trip. We then bought some (very good) empanadas for dinner at a local Peruvian place, and tried potatoes a la Huancaína – potatoes in a spiced cheese sauce flavored with a Peruvian yellow pepper. We managed all that without speaking any English. English knowledge is much less common up in the Andes.

Ollantaytambo was our first spot to spend the night. It has a train station for the trip to Machu Picchu, so it’s a common stop for visitors to Machu Picchu. It was a really lovely place, with some very interesting ruins, and a lovely historic square. They don’t have traffic lights, but use traffic police at the larger intersections

Ollantaytambo is a really lovely and picturesque place. We wanted to get more photos but never had a great chance since we were mostly there in the evenings.

They have Tuk Tuks all over the place in the smaller Andean towns, and we took mini-taxis around to get to the train station and when we were tired enough, the fares were 2-5 Soles (exchange is around 3 Soles / dollar. It was a very charming place and we wished we had more time there since there was a lot to explore.

We got to bed at the B&B ready to go to Machu Picchu the next day.

next: Ollantaytambo to Macchu Pichu 

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.

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

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.

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. 

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 

Planning for packing is critical when traveling to other countries. You need to know what luggage sizes are going to work everywhere you want your luggage to go by domestic flights, buses/trains/whatever. If you make a mistake here, it’s not the end of the world- it’s just possible to get hit with charges to check a bag and deal with collecting it.

For us we have the big camera, a Nikon D500 with a few lenses including the big Tamron 150-600. That eats a bag. We use a large padded Think Tank Glass Limo case. It’s carried this lens and camera around four continents so far, kept everything safe and easy to access, and it’s easy to reconfigure when your gear changes. It also is 18 pounds with camera and lenses and eats one bag from our luggage. Sometimes I took the dictionary, phone, and bird field guide in the camera bag as well which put it around 20 lbs but lets me carry one bag for all my stuff.

On top of the camera gear, we each packed one backpack with stuff we’d want on planes and trains and buses and things. Power cords go there, as do backup batteries for the phones/iPad, snacks, water bottles when possible, jackets/t-shirts, and sometimes umbrellas. This is also a good place for bug repellents.

We bring paper bird field guides to new countries we visit. We read sections of interest in free time and use books for identification since they don’t need batteries or network. For this trip we got a used copy of Birds of Peru: Revised and Updated Edition, which is laid out nicely, has nice illustrations, and has nice clear region/range maps for each species.

We also packed Lonely Planet: Peru and Lonely Planet Latin American Spanish Phrasebook and Dictionary. No batteries and packed with useful material. It’s written by Brits, so they call eggplants aubergines and they always call cilantro ‘coriander’ but it’s very readable and in general it’s a solid phrasebook. The canned phrases in the phrasebook all seem idiomatic for what I hear and read in Latin America, I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of it, and it’s helped. Good index. Nice food dictionary in the back as well as a compact en-es dictionary and es-en dictionary. This was critical for Peru since in much of the country few speak English.

Then we each had a suitcase. Because we had really expansive luggage allowances with one checked bag on Interjet, and the connecting LatAm flights, and could check bags on the long bus. Since we had a lot of suitcase capacity, we then overfilled with heavy clothes, fearing the cold. It mostly wasn’t very cold. Totally should have packed shorts.

Peru also isn’t a 110v system. They’re 220 like most of the world, but uses two/three-pronged plugs keyed like the US. So long as we could find the power supply/device saying it could handle 220 input, we took it with us and used it, and everything was fine. If we didn’t see support for 220 on a device we didn’t plug it in. iPhone chargers and most chargers in general are fine, so this really wound up being nbd. We made sure we had enough USB chargers for all our things using only two-prongers and we were fine, but we did stay at places with no grounded plugs. Good to be prepared to cope with the local power setup in new countries.

We also checked into water at this point. In Peru you don’t drink the tap water, but drink bottled/filtered water. You definitely want to know whether tap water is potable wherever you’re visiting. If the water isn’t potable, use bottled/filtered water religiously, brush your teeth with bottled water, and be careful.

Our extra luggage capacity had a cost – weight. We worried about the cold and were lugging around heavy useless clothes a lot. We could have slimmed down a lot more on clothes. In higher altitudes, the cost of luggage weight is higher. Altitude sickness hits right as you’re picking up your bags. The agony we experienced of lugging bags while our body was starved of oxygen hopefully will be a helpful reminder to pack light. As Aeschylus says, we learn through suffering.

The big takeaways are to pack as light as possible, make sure you check regulations all the way through your journey before you pack, check power, and pack as light as possible even if you’ve got some empty luggage capacity.

next: The Long Days of Travel