Cusco

We arrived in Cusco safely on Monday morning after quite the adventure. What we expected to be a short one hour flight from Lima turned into a day long adventure and a test of patience. The morning of our flight to Cusco, before leaving the hostel we checked our flight info and were surprised to see that the airline (Peruvian Airlines) no longer flew to Cusco.

They forgot to mention that to us.  We went to the airport anyways to see what was going on and the staff (less than helpful) told us that all flights were cancelled for at least 10 days. We later learned from a German traveller that Peruvian airlines had been operating this route without a licence for about a year and the government shut them down.

Basically, we had these options:

1. Going on a waitlist for another airline, the earliest flight being at 12 in the afternoon the following day (even then we would be unlikely to make it).

2. Take a bus from Lima to Cusco (30 hours).

3. Fly to Arequipa and then try to make it on a 10 hour overnight bus. 

We chose option 3 because that way we would be able to get out of the airport and possibly see Arequipa which is quite nice. We managed to get a ticket for the flight 5 minutes before boarding time and flew to Arequipa. After a quick taxi ride to the bus station, we managed to buy the last 2 tickets for the overnight bus arriving in Cusco at 6am. After a very comfortable and enjoyable ride (shout out to Cromotex bus company) we got in to Cusco and were able to get a few hours sleep before starting language school...

More to come about Cusco and spanish school.