Touring Peru Without Planning

About a week and a half before I found myself squinting at a landscape more ancient than my life choices, I was in the back of a short bus that seemed to be driving too fast, bouncing down California's Central Coast on my way to LAX. There I was, hunched over my phone, furiously booking tours to Machu Picchu, some other ruin-y spots, and a third lap around the City of Cuzco. I had neglected to plan any part of my trip until this exact moment, a decision I made not out of laziness but out of a deep-seated belief that somehow everything would magically fall into place after being overworked and unable to manage my schedule —like a choose-your-own-adventure book, but with less plot and more turbulence.

Highly recommend Jen Kirkman's book. Great flying/drinking company.

Fast forward, and I’m somewhere between Bogotá and Lima continuing to read Jen Kirkman's book, teetering on the edge of my own ‘How Stella Got Her Groove Back’ moment. My self-esteem’s had a nice boost after a ten-day stint in Curaçao, but I’m also a little melancholic over the Brit I may never see again. You know, the usual emotional stew of travel romance and impending departures.

The flight over the Andes is bumpy, the kind of bumpy that makes me question all my life decisions. Avianca’s sole offering of beer is laughably weak, so I soldier on with Jenn Kirkman’s book and try to forget that I’m trapped in a tin can hurling itself through turbulence. We eventually land in Lima, where confusion greets me like an old friend. No one tells me if I need to collect my bag or just head to my gate. It’s chaos. But somehow, I make it to my connection.

Lima's airport feels like I’ve wandered into an outdoor gear convention—North Face, Patagonia, you name it, all catering to the hiker-slash-backpacker crowd. It's sort of like being in a Latin American version of Denver.

Lima's airport filled with the outdoorsy types.

The flight into Cuzco is really something. Cuzco's elevation is 12,000 feet. For comparison, airplanes are usually pressurized to 10,000 feet for comfort. Exhausted, bags in hand around midnight, I immediately try to call an Uber, but no drivers are biting. It's late, and I’m quickly becoming one of the last remaining souls in the airport. Two taxis wait outside, both already spoken for by some college-aged Scots who are trying to negotiate their cab fare like it’s a flea market.

It’s like $10, not exactly worth the haggling in my opinion.

I panic and wonder how I'm going to get to my hotel if I can't get a driver while my phone continues to attempt to hail an uber. While having a mild panic attack, the Scots distract me with their bartering. It's ridiculous they are for trying to cut the cab fare in half when it's not that much by American/European standards and we're nowhere near the city.

The cab driver eventually walks up to me and asks where I'm going. I tell him that I'm staying at the Hilton Garden Inn thinking that he may know of another driver who's willing to help me out. The cab driver, sensing my desperation, dumps the Scots’ bags out of his trunk and gestures for my suitcase instead. The Scots loudly protest and shout. The driver shrugs. My mom always said money talks; I guess tonight, I’m fluent in the language.

As we drive through the quiet streets, I start to question my life choices again. In my broken Spanish, I ask the driver if he takes credit cards, but of course, he doesn’t. I’m carrying a $100 bill, and he doesn’t have change. We stop at a store, and he asks for my cash. I hand it over, half-expecting to never see him again. But, surprisingly, he comes back with the exact change. People are still good, right?

I silently congratulate myself on my ability to communicate as well.

We arrive at the Hilton Garden Inn. I drag my suitcase, now weighing roughly the same as a baby elephant thanks to the Colombian wool suit and all the bottles of alcohol I’ve purchased during my adventures, into the lobby. I’m out of breath, dizzy from the altitude, and the staff kindly sends someone up to my room with an oxygen tank. They know the drill better than I do.

It’s only then that I realize my right ear is throbbing. Ever since I went on an underwater Aquafari in Curaçao, where I essentially rode a scooter on the ocean floor, my ear hasn’t felt right. The oxygen probably isn’t helping, so I text my mom for advice. She’s already scheduled an appointment with our family doctor for when I return. Moms are the real MVPs.

The next morning, after what felt like the sleep of the dead, I meet a college-aged kid who leads me down a cobblestone street to a series of increasingly larger buses that eventually deliver me to the glass-ceilinged train bound for Machu Picchu. The ride is stunning— a raging river and tree covered mountains. It's like the Rockies. Upon arriving at the base of the site, I stand clueless until I notice a fellow traveler who also looks like he’d booked his tour last minute on Viator. Turns out, he had. We bond over our mutual disorganization and wait for our guide, who introduces himself as Hamilton—a name that made me briefly wonder if I’d accidentally walked into a South American version of Revolutionary America.

As we hike up to the ruins, I do my best to mask the fact that my sea-level lungs are threatening to exit my body in protest.

We walk the once a thriving city. There are a couple things that stick out to me. The first is how much this looks like medieval Europe. The architecture of some of the structures include steep-pitched rooves that would've been covered in thatch. Second is the fact that the ground is covered in plastic erosion control measures, a sign of over major over tourism. Third, the stones that made up everything from the irrigation canals to the homes, pieced together and fit like a glove many years after construction. It appeared to be the same method of construction that humans around the globe developed separately. You’ve gotta love convergent evolution.

Incan building ingenuity has enabled construction to last centuries.

The Inca developed stone architecture to solve the problems of the day. They developed a knack for stacking rocks in ways that would outlast centuries of rain, wind, and tour groups armed with selfie sticks.

My Chinese tour companion and I follow the guide around the ruins of Machu Picchu while he tells us about various aspects of the community. I take a couple of selfies at the famous lookout point and then the guide offers to takes a couple for me. I agree even though I’m feeling out of sorts. I appreciate the gesture, but the end result makes me look like an aging social media influencer imposter.

Our guide delivers the requisite historical facts, and then things took a turn when he casually throughs in a mention of aliens—because apparently no conversation about ancient architecture is complete without interstellar speculation. My Chinese tour companion and I exchanged knowing looks. He lets out an audible sigh while mine is internal. I usually believe in tipping but can't bring myself to do so with an alien conspiracy theorist.

Lunch with my new tour companion is a mix of business talk and existential musings when we realize how similar work cultures in China and the U.S. really are. I end up covering the meal bill after my new friend realizes he had lost his wallet—an event that would normally irritate me, but in the high-altitude haze, felt oddly poetic. He offers to pay me back repeatedly and then even weeks later over WhatsApp, which I really appreciate.

On the train back to Cuzco, I can't find my seat and end up at a family-style table with a Filipino family from Baltimore. It’s all fun and games until the mom gets standoffish, only to realize her phone’s dead and she needs my battery pack. Sweet, sweet karma.

Mid-ride, a man in a monster mask jumps into the aisle, dancing to traditional Peruvian pan flute music in an unexpected performance. The train staff then puts on a fashion show of alpaca wool garments. It was a fever dream of Peruvian culture meets QVC, and I, for one, am both enthralled while hoping that they don't come near me. It’s a bizarre combo of folklore and fashion show. I assume that the monster is an Incan spirit, but that was never really made clear to me, so I just go with it.

By the time I collapse onto my hotel bed, I’ve reached the zenith of modern travel absurdity. I’ve booked an entire country’s worth of tours while bouncing around on a bus to LAX, and now I’m gasping for air in Cuzco, Peru, trying to dodge conspiracy theories about aliens. If the Incas could drag stones up mountains, surely, I can drag myself through another two days of this.

Day two? It involves a llama and guinea pig meat. It starts with an alpaca farm and a standoffish llama. I asked a fellow traveler to take a photo of me with a grazing llama and ended up with a series of photos of me initially petting the animal and then backing off when it lunged at me. It's a great series of photos

We head out on a large bus to archaeological sites around the region. To be honest, there are sites that seem much more impressive than Machu Picchu to me, but it may just be the lack of crowds and warmer weather. My favorite site is called Ollantaytambo, and has a great small town filled with artisans at the base of the ruins.

Ollantaytambo ruins in Peru where they keep the grass down using sheep.

As the number of people on the bus began to diminish as groups got off at various stops, I overhear a funny conversation between two American women and laugh. They look towards the back of the bus at me and say, "Right? He knows," about whatever they are conversing. We decide to meet up after the tour for dinner and drinks at a bar on the side of a hill that supposedly has a great view according to one of the Womens' contacts.

I head back to my Hilton Garden Inn room, nap, shower, change, and call an uber. Once at the restaurant, I hmm and haw and wonder if I should get the local delicacy, hui, initially deciding against it after seeing the corpse of a guinea pig at the table next to ours. Curiosity gets the best of me and decide to ask the waiter if they can shred the meat, so I don’t have to stare into the eyes of my meal. He jokes that I’m missing out on the experience, but honestly, I’m good without the visual trauma of a mummified rodent.

A neighboring table's guinea pig meal.

Later, we walk, gasping up hills, to the bar with incredible view of Cuzco while we sip pisco sours. I realize that I'm not particularly feeling the altitude and raw egg whites in my drink and decide not to finish it. I still manage to tell the girls about my time in Curaçao with the Brit. They eat it up as if it's a meal in my own version of Eat Pray Love. One of them delivers a nugget of wisdom: “You’ll never know unless you try. Not trying is self-sabotage.” It strikes a nerve. The other remarks about how I have nothing to lose, so why not pursue it?

I wish my new friends goodbye and call an Uber back to the Hilton Garden Inn. I attempt to call it an early night before my last day in Peru, but the echos of self-sabotage are playing in my brain. It was like the ghosts in Dickens' Christmas Carole.

Pisco sour with a view.

It’s a relief the following morning when I get to sleep in before a tour of Cuzco. The tour includes typical Spanish colonial architecture that one will find all over the Western Hemisphere with the exception of one thing- inside the cathedral there’s a mural of the Last Supper, only instead of eating a typical Jewish / Middle Eastern meal like Jesus would’ve partaken, he was eating guinea pig in this particular image in Cuzco’s cathedral. I appreciate the fact that the people who creating this basilica may not have done so by their own will, so they took the idea of the last supper and made it their own.

The cathedral in Cuzco. Jesus eating a dead giunea pig not shown.

My company on this tour includes a couple from San Francisco. One of the pair was born and raised in the U.S., while the other was born in Korea. We grab post tour dinner and walk around Cuzco after dark. They help me shop, particularly the Korean who’s unafraid of haggling. He goes back and forth, pushing a shopkeeper for a larger discount, which is seriously entertaining to watch. I'm willing to be the shopkeeper regrets her decision to solicit our business after what the Korean puts her through. She insists she can't give a discount on the animal figurines made of extremely soft baby alpaca since it's her uncle's farm south of the city, but he relents. Eventually, he scores me a set for each of my employees and two higher-end figurines - one for me and one for my mom that she’s taken to dressing up for most major holidays in the years since. The San Francisco couple is also kind enough to take photos of me given that I'm alone.

I call it a night, thank the San Franciscans, and head out. I feel grateful for my adventures but look forward to going home to get out of the altitude that somehow makes me feel sunburned and dehydrated all the time.

A market showcasing the many varieties of potato that the Inca cultivated was included in the tour.

The next morning, I head to the airport where I catch my series of flights that go from Cuzco to Lima, to Bogotá, and finally back to LA. Not only does my luggage containing my new suit and wet trunks not make it to LA, but all of Southern California is on fire. As I ride the shuttle back to the Central Coast, flames line both sides of the freeway, but somehow, LA commuters are still powering through. The smell of burning brush seeps into the shuttle as I reflect on the last few weeks.

Being exhausted from the long trip, unable to sleep due to the smoke, and frustrated over my lost luggage while being stuck on a shuttle bus for three hours leaves me with unwanted time on my hands.

Awkward while dehydrated in Cuzco's main square courtesy of the San Franciscans.

Maybe, I think, I’ve gone through this awful separation for a reason. I go to amazing places and meet interesting people that I never would have been able to do of my life didn’t implode. It could be that it’s not the places you go but the people who accompany you along the way that make up life. And, it’s about knowing when to outsource the struggle, like booking tours through Viator in the back of a bumpy ass short bus that’s driving too fast. As I pulled out my copy of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F$%*, I read a quote attributed to Freud, "One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful." Growth is hard. But, learning to wing life? Easier than ever.