Thursday 2/26/2026
The thick humidity and nighttime fog that greeted us exiting the Lima airport was a change from Virginia, where it had just snowed a few days prior. Apart from some naps on the plane ride, I had been awake since the early morning after very little sleep, so Nate and I just did lights out.
Friday 2/27/2026
We returned to the airport the next morning, and on the tarmac, I noticed what I thought might be Mi-17 helicopters (Russian-produced) at a hangar in the distance. Looking it up later, I found that the Peruvian Air Force actually does use Mi-17s for search and rescue and anti-drug trafficking, and the ones I saw are in Lima for maintenance. We were soon in the air, and the landscape gradually transitioned from arid hills to jagged, snowy peaks reaching through the clouds. When we touched down in Cuzco, you could tell we were in the Southern Hemisphere near the equator, as the sun was high and bright. After getting unpacked at the hotel, we had the rest of the day to get acclimatized to the 11,000′ altitude, so some of us went to a chicken restaurant for lunch, very tasty compared to airplane food. Nate and I wandered around some more as the afternoon thunderstorm rolled in, but we knew it was time to get back once even the locals started going inside. After resting in the hotel for the afternoon, we set out again in the rain going up and down lots of stone staircases and backstreets (not pleasant at that altitude) for an hour until we got soup at a cafe that was playing what sounded like AI-generated jazz. On the way back to the hotel, we encountered a parade (maybe football related) that was shooting fireworks into the air that were failing to explode because of the rain, instead making cracking noises.
Saturday 2/28/2026
We met Guido after breakfast and toured Qorikancha, the temple of the sun that the Spanish built a church on top of. The church architecture looked almost like we were in Europe, but the stone hues and Inca stone underneath gave it away. We learned that Inca stones were mortarless and interlocking, with walls angled inwards for stability. The roofs would have originally been thatched. The niches in the walls doubled as nooks for decorations and as earthquake shock absorbers. We also went to Sacsayhuaman, the citadel overlooking Cuzco that was used for religious ceremonies. Afterwards, some of us went to a restaurant in Cuzco to get lunch, and I got my first taste of guinea pig. We traded some of eachothers meals, but Blake instantly felt remorse for eating guinea pig that would haunt him for the rest of the trip. I rested at the hotel again during the afternoon thunderstorm.
