It has been a long day today! First I woke up very early 4:00 am because of nightmares I was having! That's a first for me in a long time! I think the food had something to do with it since I felt bad right after dinner yesterday! But after breakfast and a strong coffee, I felt a lot better! I checked out of my hotel in Lima at about 11:00 am and headed to the airport to catch a flight to Cusco, the capital of the Inca empire. The ride to the airport was faster this time, I guess it is not rush hour! One thing I did not mention about Lima is that there is no metro, or even a tramway !!! For a city of 9 million people, well you can imagine the traffic then... There are thousands of buses and taxis some licensed some unlicensed, so it is very hard to get around in a car in Lima at any time of the day!
In any case, once at the airport I had to wait a couple of hours for my flight with a local Peruvian airline, Star Peru. The flight was on time and was not a big jet but rather a small propeller plane, which immediately made me think that the ride will be a bumpy one and sure enough it was!! We were going up and down like a roller coaster anytime we hit a patch of clouds. Looking out the window, the Andes mountains looked just majestic rising to the heavens sometimes high above the clouds. Some peaks were covered with snow and some were just barren with no vegetation and no rocks... After an hour or so of flying, we arrived in Cusco!! It was surreal, this city in the middle of this high mountains was once the center of power of the Americas!!! For me this is a dream come true! For a native Berber like me from the Atlas Mountains of North Africa to come visit another indigenous population in another mountain chain in a far away land that is awesome! What I saw on my way from the airport to my hotel in Cusco reminded me of some of the villages deep in the Atlas Mountains away from civilization. I believe indigenous people all over the world share common bonds, that of survival under harsh conditions, that of blending in with nature and that of fierce resistance to outside invasions.
Here are some pictures I took from the plane... Enjoy
High above the Andes
High above the Andes
My hotel in Cusco
Cusco from the air
A snow capped peak in the Andes
My body is going through a cyclic training exercise from high altitude (Quito, 10,000 to 13,000 ft), to low altitude (Lima, 512 ft) and now high altitude again as a Cusco sits at 11,200 ft! I am feeling the altitude much worse now than Quito!! I am drinking coca tea like water and sucking some coca candy but so far the headache is constant and just feeling a general malaise!!! I hope with time this goes away as the mountains are calling and the lost city of the Inca, Machu Picchu, is waiting so I must keep going.
