Day Two Morning

Recorded by Lise and Ose

5:45 AM. Our wake-up calls woke us, at least some of us. The rest of us were awoken by our walking alarm clock, also known as Ms. Maggio. We dragged ourselves down to the entrance of the hotel’s restaurant only to be forced into waiting for our buffet breakfast. Although it started late at 6:15 AM, breakfast was enjoyable. We had a variety of breads, juices (including pineapple and melon). We filled our plates with yellow potatoes, egg, and fried fruit. After breakfast, we clambered into our bus and headed to the airport for our 10:15 flight to Cuzco. After much waiting, we finally all got through security check, although we were held back due to some of our boarding passes being defective. To pass time, we played Chinese Poker and Mao, among other games. Finally, we were called to board a bus which brought us to our plane. Most of us spent the  flight either sleeping or reading, only stopping to eat some crackers and peanuts served by the flight attendants.

 However, after 1 hour and 30 minutes passed, our plane swooped down towards Cuzco, the best city of Peru (according to Jorge, our local tour guide who comes from Cuzco). 

Snow capped mountains embedding the landscape surrounded clusters of mud brick houses,  and as we got closer and closer to the ground, the mud-brick houses grew and flowers colored the landscape. Watching the scenery as we crept closer along with the soothing airplane’s music was completely worthwhile.  After getting off the plane, we climbed onto our new bus where we met our new bus driver, Alex, and we were briefed about our activities for the day. We headed for lunch at a local restaurant up in the mountains where we devoured chairo (traditional Cuzco soup), Al Paca (a llama-like animal), and tropical fruit ice cream. And to top that, the waiters served us superb sweet coca tea which was one of the two best remedies for altitude sickness (the other being shopping).  Local musicians playing traditional flutes, drums, and guitars accompanied our wondrous lunch.  Bottom line, Lunch was freaking AWESOME!!!!