Cusco - First impressions...

We had tons planned in Cusco, but our first order of business was acclimatization. Cusco was the capital of the Inca empire and the Incans just loved a bit of altitude. In this case around 3400m above sea level.

Aside from a few other bits of basic info we didn't know much about Cusco before we landed. What we learnt was that the landing itself involves a rather "interesting" horseshoe valley descent into the centre of the the city. A tad hair raising if I'm honest (the mountains and valley walls seemed a touch closer than I'm sure they were).

Once on the ground it turns out the city is pretty darn nice! Colonial architecture on top of (literally) the old Inca city, plazas, shops, cafes, restaurants, bar and fountains - and all with 360° mountain views. Awesome.




Aside from a few headaches and breathlessness from the most minor exertion, acclimatization wouldn't be too much hassle; sitting around in plazas drinking coffee or finding reasonable places to eat and drink worked out pretty well for both of us.

On our 4th day in the city we met up with Bex's brother, George. We showed him round the city and introduced him to the token Irish pub before also meeting up with 7 other travellers and a guide; they'd all be joining us a for a far more interesting (and demanding) version of the Inca trail...

In deepest darkest Peru

Well... Not really, but we are in Peru and we did find Paddington Bear within the first couple of hours on the ground in Lima.



First things first though; we flew in via Madrid and lost a couple of hours due to delays - this was quite welcome however, as it meant we arrived (20 hours later) at a slightly more manageable 7am. We threw our bags down in our rather simple (but nice!) B&B and strolled out to investigate our surroundings.

Our surroundings were the district of Miraflores; the police and security guard laden tourist epicentre of Lima. Safe and easy certainly, but friends and guide books had scared us (me) away from almost anywhere else, and anyway, a simple start to ease us back into our travels seemed quite reasonable and sensible.

Kennedy Park is the hub of Miraflores, so we headed that way first. En route we landed straight in Central park instead, and within that we noticed cats... lots and lots of cats.






I've neglected to find out why they are all here but, although all seem stray, they are generally a healthy and very friendly bunch. We sat around petting the little fellas till our need for coffee grew, then headed off to explore more [we would, of course, head back to see the cats frequently everyday].

What did we find? Well, not a great deal to be honest - Lima was always just an essential stop off on the way to Cusco three days later. We found Paddington (obvs), a few small parks, some pre-Inca Ruins, a shopping centre and some nice restaurants. We ventured into the city centre proper, checked out the main square (Plaza de Armas) and fumbled around with some poor attempts at the Spanish language.

Most of all we simply found our travelling heads and legs again. On our fouth morning we bid farewell to our helpful and friendly host at the B&B, locked ourselves securely in our awaiting taxi and headed off to collect our flight. More adventurous times are planned in Cusco...