Trip to Peru Miniseries: Day 1 - Cusco

Before I start this post, I had to say that I didn't try to write the whole miniseries about this trip, but as I wrote about the story, there are more and more stories that I wanted to write down as a reminder for myself and share to other, and the post becomes really long for my typical post. So, I decided to separate into a post for each day. You can find more post here for Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4.

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Even though this trip comes from the observation in South America as a starting point, I will not talk about my observation run, as this is my fourth time going to Magellan, and I already talked about it few times in previous posts.

Instead, I will start the story with my first flight from Chile to Peru. I had to stay in the airport from around 9pm to catch the flight at around 5am the next morning. That was 8 hours layover. It wasn't super exciting since everything close around midnight except Starbucks in the terminal. I tried to sleep in the airport, but couldn't really fall sleep as I was worried about my luggage. Unfortunately, this flight was delayed until like 6am, which made my flight landed in Lima, Peru at 8am which is just one hour before my next flight. I had never been to Lima before so I don't really know what to expect at the airport, how the custom works and where I should head too. Once I landed, I had about 45 mins to get to my next flight. I ran to the custom, ran inside the airport, and finally reached my flight in time with about 5 mins to spare. And that was just the beginning of the trip that I travel alone.

Plaza Mayor de Cusco with Cusco Cathedral in the background

I reached Cusco without too many problems, except the little hiccup with the taxi driver. I had to pay $10 for the taxi which usually cost $3. I didn't really read too much about Cusco before my trip. Once I settled down in my hostel, Mama Simona Hostel (which I highly recommended), I headed to the center of town with an amazing view. I exchanged for $200 for the whole trip, which turns out to be enough for my 4 days trip to Peru. I also went inside Cusco Cathedral, which was amazing. The most exciting part about the Cathedral was the painting of "The Last Supper" with a guinea pig at the center meal, painted by local Incans during the Spanish occupation. I walked around the city, stopped by a local restaurant for a quick lunch (which wasn't that good), and visited Qurikancha, which is a temple that was built since the Inca time. By this time, I was super tired since I didn't really get any sleep last night (or the night before for observing). So, I decided to head back to my hostel, took a shower and find a place to eat. Fortunately, my roommate in the hostel from Austria knew some Spanish and I decided to follow him for dinner. Since I was not super impressed with my first meal in Peru, I decided to just let him choose the place. We walked past all the tourist traps in the center of the city to the local market and picked a small shop near the market for our place for dinner.

Qorikancha with the view of the mountain

The shop is very small and super local. I would not be able to order anything here by myself as I don't know any Spanish. And the food turned out to be amazing. I got a fish plate that comes with a rice soup, fried rice with fried fish and a coco tea (my new favorite kind of tea) for just 5 soles (or $1.56). That was amazing. Now, my impression about the food in Peru has improved greatly. And my new mission is to eat this type of food again even though I will be alone next time. Before heading back, I went to a supermarket to try a dessert and a Peruvian Coke, called (Inca Kola). I think it tasted like Fanta. That concludes the end of my first day in Peru. It was a good day in general, except the dinner just made it to an awesome day. (I also met another person from UCLA at the hostel whom I will meet again at Machu Picchu). The second day will be about my experience heading to and spend some time at Aguas Calientes.

My favorite meal of the entire trip (5 sols or $1.5)