Two straight days of travel. We are up early on the boat. Our luggage must be outside our room by 7:15, we must totally vacate our room by 8. Then a slideshow at 9 and we are off the boat and headed to the airport. Our plane leaves at noonish, we fly back via Guayaqil — refuel and back to Quito. Then head to the international departures and on to Lima. We land in Lima and I start searching for our guide. Some of the other guides take pity on us and look at our itinerary. One of them smiles, grabs my luggage and literally walks us across the street to the hotel. I knew it was close to the airport, but I’m talking out one set of doors, across a crosswalk and we are in the hotel lobby.

View of the airport from the hotel lobby

Yeah — we are standing at the airport and that is the hotel!

In our defense it was 11:00 pm and dark out; there really is no defense, but we are not chalking this one up to being lost.

Our rooms were fine and it was nice having a full shower after 5 days on the boat….but the Peruvian soccer team was staying at the hotel and not only was every door guarded by multiple security men, the rally band was outside our window beating drums till after 12:30 am. Oh well tomorrow starts early again and involves a bit of travel.

That’s the drum-led rally band for the national Peruvian soccer team. They were leaving early in the morning for a flight to the U.S.

Thursday (I think).

We pass all the soccer players at breakfast. They are all decked out in black suits — traveling in style. We walk across the street to the airport — we got the drill now, and check in at 9 am for our 10:50 flight.

Land in Cusco before noon and drive to the Sacred Valley. Before I show you this hotel, let me recap our accommodations — Quito. Incredible location two blocks from the historic square of Old Town. Charming hotel, but we had a triple room. Jordan was upstairs and so was the bathroom.

Try these stairs in the dark in the middle of the night to get to the bathroom.

Then to the ship, again we requested a triple room.

So now we are headed 2 hours (48 miles) south of Cusco to our hotel in the Sacred Valley. The last two miles to get here looked like this.

But oh my, when we arrived we were in paradise. We have 2 rooms here.

Jordan’s room.

Our room!

The surroundings…

I had to include some animals!

So we really enjoyed our other accommodations (and particularly the cost savings) — but wow is this place nice!

So goodnight from the Sacred Valley Peru. Tomorrow we have an 8 hour tour, so more pics to come!