So this is my first blog post now that we have officially hit the road on our first stop of Peru and first off I must say how GREAT Peru is. So far we have experienced nothing but amazingly nice people (J.J even dropped a 50 soles on the ground and somebody stopped him to give it back), really clean streets and the mercury being above 0 degrees certainly doesn't hurt!
We arrived Monday night without incident and were able to find Kait and J.J at our designated meeting spot in the Lima airport. Unfortunately their arrival wasn't quite as smooth - they arrived safely but their bags didn't make it from Miami. Once we finally got sorted at the airport and took our our first round of Peruvian Soles from the ATM we grabbed at cab to our Hostel, The Condor House, in Miraflores (one of the safe neighbourhoods of Lima). Overall a pretty standard hostel, with a bit of the stench that you might expect from a $10 a night place to stay. Once we settled in (around 12am) we decided to explore a bit as we were still pretty wired and definitely hungry. Upon recommendation from the guy at our hostel reception we wandered westward for a bit until we stumbled upon the stretch bars and restaurants he highlighted for us on the map and reward ourselves for making it to Peru safe and sound with our first round of beers - Cristal, a local Peruvian Brew. We drank and chatted about how much it doesn't really feel like we are travellers yet, it kind just feels like vacation and then we all hypothesized about when it would really "feel real" ...... I will let you know when it does
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| Sharing our first round of Cristal |
Follow the late night beers we were obviously hungry so we decided to hit the 24hr McDonalds we saw a few blocks back (very cultured I know) and headed back to the hostel to get some sleep.
After a little slow moving in the morning we decided to head down to the beach in Miraflores to take in some rays on the Pacific Ocean...it was a bit overcast, but still quite warm so worth the very short walk. And as so many travellers do on their first day in hot weather, especially those coming from the dead of winter in Canada we all headed out without our Sunscreen on......right at high noon to 3pm on the beach. Here is a news flash for you PERU IS NEAR THE EQUATOR. So needless to say we all ended up with MASSIVE sunburns on day 1 (rookie mistake I know), even Bronze-asaures is suffering from the effects of the hot equator sun on his white Canadian body. Jonny would like everyone to know that this is just a freak incident due to the proximity to the equator and this won't happen again.
Prior our trip down to the beach we ran into a Peruvian security guard scooting around on his seqway who wanted to stop and chat with us (i think we was practising his English) and he recommended some really great REAL peru restaurants to us so after the beach we hit one up and the food was amazing!! The menu was all in Spanish and so was the waiter so we played a little game I like to call mystery lunch whereby we just pointed to random things on the menu and hoped for the best. After carefully having the boys taste test each dish to ensure there was no fish for me and Kait we all dined like kings for a mere 40 Soles (less than 20 bucks for all 4 of us including beer) at this point we started to realize the effects of our day without sunscreen so we headed back to the hostel to nurse our sore bodies
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| Our first view of the Pacific in Miraflores |
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| Jonny taking on the Pacific |
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| The Pacific Won |
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| catching some rays......still sans sunscreen |
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| Nursing the effects of the equator sun |
After some rest and recovery we decided to head out for our last dinner in Miraflores where we grabbed some Empanada's which I had been craving and some more Cristal and then headed back to the hostel for some sleep before our 5am wake up call to get a plane to Cuzco - the jumping off spot for the Inka trail
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| Cristal and Empanadas |
Upon arrival at the airport Kait and J.J were finally reunited with their bags and we hopped on our flight to Cusco. We have not landed in Cusco and settled into our hotel were we were welcomed with Coco Tea by the owner. We have few days here to get acclimatized to the high altitude before we actually take off on the trek to Machu Picchu. So far we have only experienced a few mild symptoms but nothing to crazy. We decided to take a quick team nap.....which actually lead to a 9 hour nap (I guess it was hitting us harder than we thought). We have our first taste of trekking tomorrow when we head out on a 1 day trip across the Sacred Valley...... Great time to break in those hiking shoes!! Looking forward to our week here in Cusco.... more to come!
OOO_Talia
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| Our first view of the Andes from the Flight |
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| Some Coco Tea to Welcome us to Cuzco |
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