Travelling to the mountains!

Today was a day of travel - from the Amazon, to the high Andes.  As a crow flies, it’s not that far, but there are no direct flights, so it took most of the day.

We bid goodbye to our ship at 9:00 am and drove though Iquitos to the airport.  Iquitos is not a very pretty city - but the drive through it’s fruit market was cool, and we got a chance to learn a bit more about it’s history.  

Our guide- who moved from one of the Amazon river villages to Iquitos when he was 10 years old- told us that when his family moved here, the city had 40,000 inhabitants.  It now has 700,000!  Most of that growth is attributed to oil companies drilling in the Amazon.  The port is indeed very large!

Before getting to the airport we stopped a the local “Indian Market” to look at local crafts.  

Then on to Lima, transfer to another plane for the short flight to Cusco - at about 12,000 feet!  It is going to be a very different experience than the Amazon!

We had a smooth connection in Lima and then the short 1 hour flight to Cusco- where they checked our temperature upon landing....

OUR guide gave us coca leaves to chew and coca candy to deal with the altitude.  We’ll try it but neither Joe nor I tend to have problems with elevation (other then getting winded).

We did not see much on our way down to the valley where our hotel is because it was getting late, but got a nice view of Cusco at dusk.