We´re here! After hanging out in LA for the better part of a week, doing just about anything but planning for this trip, we´re finally here.
We left for the airport last night at about 9pm, and things started off about the way we expected they would right from the start. We had our flight on Taca airlines, which was operated by United. So of course we went to the Taca terminal, which is on the opposite side of the airport than United and had to walk all the way across. We raced luggage carts and climbed walls to make some new long-cuts up, and so it was pretty fun.
Once in it turns out that there was some confusion over our flight. Apparently it was drastically oversold, so they tried to increase the size of the plane, and so we had to wait before we could check in. After a game of rummy this all went fine.
So through security we go and get to our gate and there´s near pandemonium. Apparently they didn´t increase the size of the plane and so they were looking for people to bump. They were only offering $400 though and our trip is already quite packed so we decided to just keep our seats.
The ride to El Salvador was incredibly smooth. So smooth in fact that I had fell asleep before we took off and didn´t wake up until we almost were ready to land. It was great. We got breakfast at the airport after landing and then caught our next plane.
Arriving in Lima around 2pm, we still had a lot to do. Our last minute attempts to reserver a spot to hike Machu Picchu were a failure because the limit for the days we wanted had already been reached. We swapped that and the jungle and tried some new dates, but still hadn´t heard back. On top of this, we weren´t able to book plane tickets to Cuzco because it was too last minute and so had to do that in person.
So right off the plane, Tom found someone to ´help´us. He treked us out of the airport, through the parking lot, and across the street to a travel agency. I was sort of ticked about this because I knew we were only going to get ripped off this way but was sort of out numbered. After 2 travel agencies and lots of bartering we actually got prices about the same as what we saw online and bought them. We checked our email and found that our new dates for Machu were good and that we needed to send them a deposit via Western Union and so we set off to do that.
Once that was complete we found a $8 taxi ride to the part of town 45 minutes away where we wanted to stay. We´re at this really awesome hostel called Loki´s Backpackers (the god of mischief and illusion? Not a bad place!). After dropping our stuff off we went out for a walk, got some Peruvians food, and hung out at a near by park before getting a proper dinner.
Now we´re all taking turns taking a shower and hanging out before having an early night to bed since we need to be at the airport tomorrow at 4am (which means getting up at 2:30-3:00), which is a real shame since its so nice here. But maybe we´ll visit again on our way back through here later on.
Anyways, the ´queue´for the computer is getting long so I´ll leave it at that! Till next time!