The Adventures of Hello Kitty: LIMA!

We made it to Lima! Mike has never been so happy seeing a plane land in the airport--

Today we took a quick city tour and got a brief lay of the land.  Lima is a world-away from what Cusco was like.  I think what we are seeing is a major shift in SES and the level of influence the Spaniards had on the people.  Lima is much more modern and city-like, while Cusco was poorer and more traditional.  I would compare Lima to an "older Waikiki".  Its on the coast and has a surfer feel to it.  

One of the couples on our GAP tour was from Australia and gave us a cute forget-me-not gift.  His name is Jack and will be our next traveling buddy after this trip--yay, Hello Kitty has a buddy!

Our hotel gives us an awesome view of the city and even has a little (snicker...) astro-turf garden outside our window.

The Adventures of Hello Kitty: Rained Out

So we were supposed to fly out today on a 925 am flight to Lima, but after checking the flight info last night we saw that the time was changed to 230 pm--sweet! we don't have to get up as early, nice.  We arrive at the airport at 1130 am to find out that our flight was changed yet again and we needed to board at 1230 pm--hmmm, okay, thank goodness we arrived early at the airport.  At the check in counter it turned out our flight and several others were grounded indefinitely due to the rain.  "Una hora y treinta minutos mas" the lady kept saying.  Turns our, our airline Star Peru does not have electronic equipment on it and fly VFR--which means if they can't see out the runway they don't fly--no magic GPS or other electronics to help fly.

SO, we waited in the airport for about 6 hours today to hear if our flight was going to be officially cancelled.  NO refunds either.  At 415 pm we are told its cancelled and we are going to be bumped to an am flight tomorrow.  Which means we need to head back into town and book another night in a hotel.  Thank goodness the hotel Mike and I stayed in is only 15 minutes away and uber-ish cheap ($50 USD).  So I'm writing to everyone from our same hotel just different room.  We were told that the only flight out tomorrow is at 1245 pm but there is a chance for an earlier flight--the catch is they couldn't tell us what time that would be but we needed to be onsite at the airport at 630 am. 

As Washingtonians, the rain doesn't seem THAT bad at all and we can't wrap our heads around why they can't fly out today--but oh well.  Makes for an interesting Christmas Day and story.  So we'll drag ourselves out of bed tomorrow early and hopefully will get a flight out in the morning so we can start our beach holiday in Lima. 

We'll keep everyone posted.

The Adventures of Hello Kitty: Wandering around downtown Cusco

So last night a was a rough night for Mike--altitude sickness finally hit him and he was up sick for a better majority of the evening.  Which means, since he is typically the one with the stronger stomach and immune system, I will be falling victim to the porcelain king in due time.  But after a light breakfast with some yummy bread at a Panaderia we found down the street we were off.

We walked around downtown a went into many many many shops.  We finally hit the crafting district where we ended up purchasing most of our gifts for people.  We also walked by some great mini-markets and got some shots of the produce and ick....chicken feet, that were being sold.  A family even let us take a picture of their cute pup wearing a rain jacket.   

Everything we purchased today

So the main craft of choice here in Cusco is weaving and knitting.  The items we picked up are made from Alpaca fiber.   I also tried my hand at bartering and either I'm really good at it or the vendors were taking pity on my boater Spanish--either way, we scored great deals!

Very important to grab snacks as we are walking-bottled sport drink, two bags of chips came out to less than $1.00 USD

The Adventures of Hello Kitty!

Hello Kitty on the flight into Lima

So a super cool 4 year old gave me just about the coolest gift ever--a snowboarding Hello Kitty bobble head!  (Why? because he accurately notes that I snowboard and he skis, so she was better suited for me :) ).  I thought she was so cool that Mike and I decided to bring her along on our trip to Peru and New York.  She is going to be joining us on all our adventures and we'll keep everyone posted on how we are doing.

Today was our first full day in Peru.  We landed in Lima about 11:00 PM yesterday and slept in the airport until our flight to Cusco at 7:30 AM the next day.   After we got settled into our hotel, we booked a city tour that visited 4 major Inca sites.  We saw the Q'engo, Pupkapukara, Saqsayhuaman, and one of the oldest churches in Cusco.  Tomorrow is an open day where we are going to head to the main plaza and do some people watching and check out the crafting district.

Now we're off to find dinner and get a solid night's rest.

PS: We found out Hello Kitty likes Bloody Mary's