Upon Arrival - Cusco edition

An occasional series of initial thoughts, misunderstandings, and (sometimes) funny stories from new places

Boarding our LATAM flight in Lima

Excitement doesn’t really capture how we felt when we arrived in Cusco. It had been a long trip to get there – literally and figuratively.

The outside of the Cusco airport.

Literally, we had driven from central Pennsylvania to Newark to catch a flight to Canada and another flight to Lima, where we had a 6-hour layover in the middle of the night. Read more about that on Adventure Peru.

Figuratively, because we had been preparing for this trip for months. Buying new gear (backpacks, hiking poles, boots, and adventure pants), and using the stepper machine at Planet Fitness every week and walking at a steep incline on the treadmill.

When we arrived in Cusco, we were stoked. Having seen the snowcapped mountains from the airplane, we were ready to start our journey to trek the Salkantay Trail to Machu Picchu.

The peaks of the Andes popping through the clouds.

When we landed, we grabbed our luggage, sidestepping the men offering to help us carry it or to give us a ride. (This wasn’t our first rodeo.) We headed outside of the airport and found the man holding the “REI travel” sign and introduced ourselves.

He guided us to a van with another driver, with an REI sign in the windshield and we climbed in. Once on the road, the driver and the man who met us at the airport started talking about Cusco – the history, the number of potato varieties – all the things a visitor needs to know…

We’d been on the road about 15 minutes when they asked us where the other people from our group were. We were confused. It was just the two of us traveling together. He handed us a clipboard with a list of names and asked us to point to ours.

Spoiler alert – our names weren’t on the list. These men were not the correct REI-hired drivers.  It appeared they were more stressed out about this snafu than we were. We told them where we were staying. I called the company’s emergency number and reached a person who asked to speak to the drivers. They refused. They dropped us off outside our hotel, took our bags out of the van, and promptly drove off.

We’ll never know if they were concerned because they screwed up, or because they missed out on the larger tip that would come from a party of six rather than a party of two.