Sofia Somewhere

We left Lima the next morning and then it was on to Quito. From Lima we flew to Guayaquil where we had a stopover before continuing on to Quito. At Guayaquil, we had to go through immigration and then go to the domestic terminal. At Lima, they told us that our bags would be checked in all the way to Quito. But after we passed immigration in Guayaquil, we saw our bags at the baggage claim. Not wanting to risk them getting left behind again, we picked them up and then just checked them in again for our next flight. We arrived in Quito in the late afternoon and Ana's parents (Ana is a friend of ours through CISV, and also Dan's camp director) picked us up at the airport. We passed by their farm house nearby before driving to the city. Farm house with the beautiful sky behind  We had dinner with her family and after, her brother Pancho drove us around the old part of the city. It was really interesting to see the city by night (as we mostly do our exploring in the day). We pa...

For our last day in Lima (and in Peru), we headed to the city center since we didn't get to check that part out last time. We took a local bus to the city center and got off at Plaza San Martin. Plaza San Martin From there we walked up to Plaza de Armas. We passed Jiron de la Union , a long pedestrian street that's sort of like an outdoor mall. Lots of shops on either side. Jiron de la Union

After visiting Pisac we headed back to Cusco, packed up our stuff and waited for the Peru Hop to pick us up. Ange found it online while we were researching for our trip, and it seemed interesting so we decided to try it out. Peru Hop is a fairly new company (started on Nov 2013) that is a hop on hop off bus transport system. They do routes from Cusco to Lima , and also Lima to Cusco . We were short on time so we just took the shortest Cusco to Lima route possible (which is a minimum of 3 days, 2 nights). We spent the first day (more of night) on the bus, from Cusco to Nazca. (At around 5:30am we actually stopped in Arequipa where a few people hopped off. We were glad we weren't on that route because we were told that the temperature was below freezing!). The second day was mostly spent on the bus as well, going from Arequipa to Nazca. At around maybe 4pm, we finally arrived in Nazca to see the lines and geoglyphs. The lines and geoglyphs range from simple lines to drawi...

On Sunday we headed to Pisac, a town in the Sacred Valley about an hour from Cusco (local bus for S/.3 (US$1)), famous for its market. Another small village, but the market is huge! We were overwhelmed, but had a good day shopping. We were able to buy lots of pretty stuff for a good bargain. Natural paints

The day after Machu Picchu, we took the train back to Ollantaytambo, picked up our bags, and took a colectivo back to Cusco. The front of the colectivo. Forgot to take a picture of the outside, but it's basically just a van. On the way back to Cusco

(Sorry for the hiatus, wifi was really erratic in Peru. Anyway, on to the blog posts.) The morning after arriving in Cusco, it was off to Aguas Calientes. To get there, we had to catch our train from Ollantaytambo in the Sacred Valley. From Cusco, we took a colectivo to Ollantaytambo. Colectivos are vans that can accommodate about 12-15 passengers, and are popular means of transport between the towns in the province. We headed to Pavitos street in Cusco where most all the colectivos leave from. It's not hard to find a van; as soon as we got off the taxi there were about a dozen men in our face asking if we needed a colectivo . The ride to Ollantaytambo was about an hour and a half long and cost us S/.10 (about US$3.5). In Ollantaytambo we picked up our tickets at the ticket booths, and then we were told that we were only allowed to bring a bag of 5 kg each on the train! So we ended up leaving our backpacks in the secure luggage storage at the ticket station, and just took ou...

We flew out of Buenos Aires and had a stopover in Santiago, Chile for a few hours and then continued on to Lima, Peru. We arrived in Lima... but our backpacks did not! There were also 2 other couples who took the same route as us whose maletas were also not there. In the end, we were told that they got left behind in Santiago. No maletas :( We were just worried (and tired and feeling dirty haha) about our bags since we would be leaving Lima the next day for Cusco at 5pm. We made our way to our hostel, checked in, but had nothing to do. So we had some dinner before calling it a night. Tacos Inca Kola - a Peruvian softdrink