It began with a flight to Miami to meet the rest of my traveling companions whom I would spend the forthcoming two weeks with. Only one of the other three people did I know, as all of us were affiliated through the same man, one Justin Peltier.
Justin is an established traveler and a recent friend. We became closer through our last year at Texas A&M via my roommate Jeff. Justin is as lovable a character as you will meet, though I did find on this trip he has quite a distaste for Jared the Subway guy and hot drinks. But a better traveling companion there is not.
Justin's other two friends, Derrell and Adrienne were also a brilliant pair. Derrell a seasoned traveler of Europe himself, and Adrienne a globetrotter, I was the neophyte of the group, fending for my bearings in a completely foreign culture for the first time in my life. The four of us together softened the blow, as well as the numerous other travelers we met along the way.
I met up with the group in Miami National Airport on the evening of September the 21st. As we waited for our overnight flight into Lima, we got to know each other a bit. There was an instant comfortability amongst the group and we soon talked like we were old friends.
Soon we boarded for a six hour flight, nearly due south. We landed in Lima around 6 in the morning and immediately shuffled onto our next flight over to Cusco. The only glitch was that somehow the three guys got bumped to a different flight than Adrienne, whose plane did not leave until nearly 4 hours after ours. Not bad, considering she had only been in an airport since Wednesday evening. Adrienne had flown from Juneau, Alaska to Seattle to Miami starting late afternoon of Wednesday, September 19th. She landed in Miami mid-day Thursday and slept in the airport until Friday morning, where she then waited all day in one of the less glamorous International airports in America for 12 more hours when we got there.
Then a simple 6 hour overnight flight later, and she was delayed in Lima for 4 more hours. The best part, of course, was that somewhere along the way of layovers and switches, the airlines had misplaced her luggage. So after finally reaching our hostel late Saturday morning, she had no change of clothes until Sunday night. She could not have been more graceful about the entire situation, having a great sense of humor about it all and never once getting upset. You stay classy San Diego.
We got settled in to the hostal and spent most of the first day just cruising around the Plazas of Cusco. More to come on what all we found.
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