Bienvenidos al Cuzco!

By 6am I was already up and gathering what little things I left unpacked. I went downstairs where my parents were already up. They tried radioing a cab for us since it was 6am on the Sunday of Election Day, which meant that no cabs or people would be out on the street. When our dad finally found a cab, they saw us off outside the house with lots of hugs and kisses and “bueno suertes.”

We got to the hostel by 7am only to find that a ton of people were still missing. Some had arrived early and went to Metro for some breakfast. Others were simply MIA. We finally left Lima at 7:45am with Tess being the latest to arrive. There was a lot of tension on the bus because it was a real possibility that we could end up missing out flight to Cuzco.

We rushed to the airport, went through check in and security very smoothly, as a group, and had a few minutes before we boarded to spare. I was starving at that point but decided against buying food since the flight was only an hour and we were told not to eat too heavily since the altitude would definitely take its toll on our bodies. 

I fell asleep the entire way to Cuzco, only waking up for a few minutes to find a little snack had been given out. I ate it and fell asleep, awaking to turbulence and the view of gorgeous mountains. Already my head was starting to feel light headed and my body a bit less energetic.

We landed and met our bus outside the airport. Unfortunately, Caitlyn was having an especially hard time adjusting to the altitude and was rushed to the hospital on a wheelchair and  oxygen tank. I felt very light headed but was excited to meet our host families. From the airport we went straight to our school, Amaunta, where our host families were awaiting our arrival. Natalie, Rachel, and I were the first to be picked up by our mom, Kati. It was cool to find out that Kati’s dad was also Vinny and Tyler’s dad, making us all family. 

We got to the house and settled in. We each had our room but decided to all move into my room since it was huge and we thought that we might be able to get body heat with 3 people cramped in the same space. We had lunch and decided to explore the Plaza de Armas a little bit. We stumbled upon a nice fruit market where we bought ample baby bananas, plantains, kiwis, and mangos. We also went to the café and school to use the internet since we lacked wifi at our house. Walking up the gigantic hill to our school was challenging because my body was having a hard time adjusting to the altitude as well. I’m pretty sure my anemia has something to do with it also but I was so short of breath and had difficulty breathing.

 

Luckily we cabbed it home back from the school and avoided going up anymore hills. We got home and munched on some snacks we’d picked up at the market near the plaza. We got our things ready for school and Natalie and I ended up falling asleep while Rachel was in the shower. It had been a super long day and our bodies, as part of the altitude symptoms, were exhausted.