After Sunday’s long day and late flight to Madrid, the next leg from Madrid starts at 01:40, not a great time for a long journey to commence, but the cabin of the Dreamliner is very pleasant, our home for twelve hours. Second dinner is very good, the wines great. After watching Elvis we sleep for a few hours before watching an initially fiery sunrise with breakfast, changing as we landed.
Like many countries, first entry into Peru requires immigration, baggage collection and re-check, so we wait ages for ours to appear, them having not been tagged priority at Heathrow like the should have. Eventually we’ve done what we had to, and head back though security to the domestic travel area.
Descent into Cusco is pretty incredible as we sweep around the mountains, unfortunately undocumented as we didn’t get any window seats. The airport is tiny, we even push our bags out into the street where our driver is waiting for us. The thin air and manky trolley made for hard going. Thank goodness we’ve not got a hire car - the roads and driving is crazy - the main road we pass through the building site of a new flyover, between worker and heavy equipment at one point. Road-rules here make Tenerife driving look sophisticated.
The Novotel is delightful, a lovely old courtyard and nice public rooms, minutes away from the old town. After lunch we wander around the area for a while, gently acclimatising to the altitude. We stop carefully since each time we’re pounced upon by touts - restaurants and bars, massage, trinkets, shoe-shine, paintings and more.
Mentioning the altitude is a great time for a final thought. We’ve been to the Andes before, many years ago, and remember how high up they get. Cusco is at 3400m,or just over two miles above sea level - amusingly almost the same as the top cable-car station on our Mt Teide. As we open bottles, the contents explode out under the low pressure!
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