A Cusco “La Convencion” Travelogue — Week 1: The Adventure Starts

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Gala & Emile’s Travelogue

7 min readAug 22, 2022

Once in a lifetime

My name is Emile. In May of this year (2022) I moved from New York City to Lima, Peru to be with my lady Gala. Then in July, Gala who is an architect got a contract from the Peruvian Department of Education to travel throughout the “La Convencion” region of Cusco, Peru to assess eighteen secondary schools throughout the region.

From mid-August to mid-September we will be visiting seventeen towns in La Convencion, a region that covers the lower Amazon and northern Andes. The following travelogue will document our journey in words, photos and videos about a region of Peru many Peruvians don’t know well, let alone the rest of the world.

We will update this travelogue as we complete the trip. I hope you enjoy our adventure vicariously as I hope we will. I wish you all safe reading and us a safe trip.

Our agenda is as follows:

Week 1 — Lower Amazon (link to Part 2)

Saturday — Lima to Cusco
Sunday — Cusco to Quillabamba
Monday — Quillabamba to Chahuares — Schools 1&2
Tuesday: Quillabamba to Media Luna — School 3
Wednesday: Media Luna to Huillcacampa — School 4
Thursday: Huillcacampa to Chapo Chico — School 5
Friday-Sunday: Palma Real and Kiteni

WEEK 2 — LOWER AMAZON

Monday: Kiteni to Progreso — School 6
Tuesday: Progreso to Koribeni to Kiteni — School 7
Wednesday: Kiteni to Shimaa — School 8
Thursday: Kiteni
Friday: Kiteni to Yomentoni to Ivochote — School 9
Saturday: Ivochote boat trip to Kirigueti
Sunday: Kirigueti

WEEK 3 — LOWER AMAZON

Monday: Kirigueti — School 10
Tuesday: Kirigueti to Timpia — School 11
Wednesday: Timpia to Pachiri — School 12
Thursday: Pachiri to Pangoa — School 13
Friday: Pangoa to Ollantaytambo
Saturday-Sunday: Ollantaytambo

Week 4 — Back to the Andes

Monday: Ollantaytambo to Patakancha — School 14
Tuesday: Patakancha to Pacca — School 15
Wednesday: Pacca to Sondorf — School 16
Thursday: Sondorf to Cusco
Friday-Sunday: Cusco

Week 5 — Last Few Schools

Monday: Cusco to Occopata — School 17
Tuesday: Cusco to San Juan de Quihuares — School 18

A few notes:

I moved to Lima in May of this year (2022) to live with Gala. We met through our online Tibetan Buddhist study group “Ocean” which is focused on the teachings of Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche. We are both devoted students and Sangha members of Trungpa Rimpoche who died in 1987 and left behind an incredible wellspring of writings and video lectures.
We are also both Morrisey fans!
My connection to Gala also auspiciously aligns with a lifelong connection to Peru, which I first visited as an eighth grader in 1979. That six-week trip with my science teacher traveling up the Andes to Machu Pichu to Lake Titicaca and Bolivia, and down the Amazon in boats must have rewired my Upper Eastside Manhattan teenage brain. So did a second trip in 2005 for two-weeks of ayahuasca ceremonies outside of Iquitos.

Day 1 — Lima to Cusco

Gala and I flew from Lima to Cusco. We were seated separately, and thankfully I had window seat for the scenic if short flight to Cusco.

We had a seamless trip with a slight snafu when we jumped into the wrong car at the airport and left our UBER in the lurch. We drove for about 15 minutes to the center of Cusco to our Airbnb which turned out to be a beautiful hostel on a back street about three blocks from Cusco’s main plaza.

Our host Jorge whose family owns the place greeted us, took us to our simple loft room, and brought us a pot of Coca tea to alleviate our lightheadedness — Cusco is about 10,000 feet above sea level in the andes, and we spent the entire stay sucking on coca candies.

We went for a late breakfast to Jack’s, a famous local spot for visitors opened by an Australian woman many years ago. Then we wandered a bit trying to make some last minute acquisitions for our trip — hiking boots and a sleeping bag for me.

We found a nice spot for camping gear and then headed back to our room to recover before dinner. We figured this would be our only “fancy” dinner for the trip and Peruvian splurged ($30) on a nice meal including a crispy guinae pig for me.

After dinner we headed to the delivery service to pick up our backpacks which we had shipped from Lima only to find that the place closed 5 minutes before we got there. Thankfully they opened at 8am on Sunday so we seemed to be ok.

Day 2 — Cusco to Quillabamba

We got up early and headed out for coffee and a pastry. Just down the block we stopped at Cicciolina and had an awesome breakfast including excellent coffee (Peru is a coffee freak’s dream). Then we headed to pick up our bags. We exchanged our receipt for a bag ticket and went to the opening of a massive warehouse in total disarray where men were wandering around looking for bags and knocking over boxes labeled fragile.

We handed one of the men our tickets and he started to wander…and wander…and wander. He would come back and ask Gala a question and then wander again. Gala was laughing and telling me they could ship our bags on to Quillabamba. I for the most part was doing my Buddha best to keep my cool. Finally after about half an hour he came out from the rubble with our packs in hand.

We were working out how to get to the bus station to get a ride to Quillabamba when the head of the first school Gala was going to visit messaged her to say he was about to leave Cusco for Quillabamba and would we like a ride. Bingo!

Note: Chogyam Trungpa writes about “auspicious coincidence” as evidence of the beneficial nature of one’s activities. Here was a wonderful cosmic message right at the beginning of our trip.

The drive from Cusco to Quillabamba is four hours long. The first hour is relatively normal, driving through small roadside towns full of people on a Sunday late morning.

At about two hours of driving we arrived in Ollantaytambo, an Incan ruin site and tourist mecca. Approaching the town, you can see silver pods hanging from the cliffs like clinging UFOs. It turns out these are climber lodgings for the insane.

We stopped in the main plaza for a quick lunch and then headed into the sky. The next hour was spent driving up a mountain to a peak of over 13,000 feet. I kept chewing the candy and felt ok, but Gala got increasingly queezy sitting next to me. Thankfully she kept it together and we finally got to the top and headed down the other side into the southern most part of the Amazon region of Cusco.

We passed some grazing alpacas and eventually found the trees and plants looking increasingly tropical. We took off our jackets and sweaters, opened the windows wide and breathed in the warm moist amazonian air. It was wonderful, and also, as we descended deeper and deeper into the river valley below felt like the beginning of a shamanic journey.

We stayed the night at a nice hotel in Quillabamba (70 soles/$20) and went around the corner for some decent pizza. The drive had been like an athletic event grabbing the handle around every sharp turn — we quickly fell asleep.