We had to sit in the Lima airport for six hours overnight. Lima airport, to its shame, has a few benches near the check-in, but other than that, nothing for those caught in a long connection, not even chairs. There are hundreds of chairs, and in fact most are empty; but they're only for people who buy food from the restaurants (and who could be hungry when there was a snack on each of our two flights?); so there were passengers stretched out on the tile over the whole second floor. We camped in a corner of one restaurant out of sight of the cashier, on a padded bench; when the waiter came by we stalled, pretending we were hunting for the best exchange rate to get Soles to buy something, and finally ordered bubbly water. They left us alone and we slept sitting up, with few neighbours.
Lima airport does have wifi, but it's not free like Quito airport and most other internationals; you have to buy it from a store somewhere, and the home page doesn't tell you where that is, so we didn't bother.
At Cusco we walked into the worst swarm of jineteros (a slang word for hustlers that I learned when we were in Cuba) I've seen in ages. Our hostel was supposed to have sent a taxi, but he wasn't there. We spent half an hour waiting and trying to decide what to do. In Lima a nice woman had approached Deborah and volunteered "only information", and of course Deb falls for this sort of thing every time - when you're tired, it's hard to ask yourself, "Wait, why do I want this? What's in it for her? What's in it for me? Why does she want to write down my name on a numbered voucher?" I was suspicious. Of course, a man recognised my Tilley hat and approached me at the baggage carousel. He had the name "Gilchris" on a placard. I knew the real taxi driver with our name on a placard would have no idea what I looked like. Sure enough, the old lady had called ahead with a description and possibly a cell phone photo, and as we were being ushered toward two chairs in front of a tour operator's desk, I dug my heels in and mutinied.
We went back to looking for the real taxi we were expecting. It still wasn't there, but dozens of other "official taxi" drivers and "official information" people hounded us. (The real "official information" office wasn't open for the day, it was still too early.) The only pay phone was conveniently "broken", and a half dozen people volunteered to make calls for us on their cell phones. The "official airport taxi" company even has a kiosk by the exit door, and their rates are posted: 30 soles into town centre, 35 or 40 to other common locations. I asked one driver how much it would be to our hostel, and he quoted 40 soles. I said, "that's crazy", knowing it couldn't be that much higher than Ecuador, and I knew the distance, roughly. "Oh, yeah", he said, "gasoline is very expensive here. $8 a gallon!" Well, in fact gasoline is expensive here compared to Ecuador (but not that expensive), but the distance to the hostel wasn't going to use more than a litre. Whose job is it to monitor business practices here? Especially at the first point of encounter for foreign visitors? Why isn't there a minivan shuttle to the old city centre where all the hostels are located?
We were tired, Deb was dizzy and confused and reluctant to be pushed to ask the right questions of anyone who wasn't trying to sell us something. She was tired, and the altitude hit her right away. A dozen "official" taxi drivers and "official information" agents told her that it was extremely common for hostels to promise a free taxi and then not deliver on their promise - surely that's what had happened, and we should just accept it and take their recommendations for a different hostel. She wandered around in a daze as I followed her with the luggage cart until suddenly she spotted a man with her name on a placard. We learned later he was late because an earlier taxi had had a problem. The name on the hostel was wrong, but it turned that he did, in fact, intend to take us to the right place, the Pakcha Real - one of only three hostels that had even bothered to respond to our email inquiries. And the hostel paid him: 12 soles (about $5), which is about the cost I'd figured on. So much for 40 soles in the "official airport taxi".
The Pakcha Real hostel, which is now, unfortunately, permanently closed, was lovely when we were there, with large, clean rooms, well tiled, with intermittently hot showers, an outdoor lounge with a propane heater, an indoor sitting room with fireplace and dining table, a kitchen just for the travellers to use, and a continental breakfast served for us in the morning.
The hostel owner Daniel was a young straight-shooter who served us coca tea right away (always available in the guests' kitchen), and then we went to bed. When we woke up he gave us directions to the Scotiabank ATM and a decent mid-range restaurant, and a map of the central core of the city. I'd been very unimpressed driving in from the airport; the town looked like a miniature Quito but more run down and ugly. The only good thing, comparably, was the air quality. However, when we walked down the hill from Daniel's to the main plaza, I became charmed by the place. The old city is very pretty, and really old. It has many streets that are cobblestone and narrow, only for pedestrians; others that have been given over to cars, but are single lane, so that if you turn into one and there's another car coming toward you, one of you has to back up.
It's "carnival" time from now until Ash Wednesday, and the main plaza is full of young people, including happy young tourists, participating in water fights and attacking each other with carnival foam. Even older tourists with cameras can be fair game; as I quietly circled trying to maintain my "journalist, non-combatant!" status, a young American girl decided I should get a taste of what I was photographing, so I got hit with water gun spray and a water balloon glanced off my thigh before I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and it was time to get the hell out of there. I did give her my most reproachful old guy look, and she said "perdón" and looked sheepish, so I guess I kind of won, sort of...
The fourteen day forecast is rain, every day, day after day - they're just kidding, right? We did get an hour of sun today...much better for photographs. We'll leave soon for the Apu Lodge in Ollantaytambo, our base of operations for the next six and a half weeks. I'm guessing we'll be back in Cusco more than once; I want to take the open-topped double-decker bus tour of Cusco, if nothing else.
Next: Ollantaytambo
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