Sunday, May 26, 2024
Today we once again woke up with the chickens. I was up at 4:15, so I hopped in the shower right away. Nathan was up a little while later. We quickly got ready, so that we could get breakfast right when it opened at 5:30.
The breakfast buffet here at Amaru Colonial is quite substantial, and I’m sad we missed it yesterday. It includes juice, coffee, coca tea, pancakes, fruit, yogurt, ham and cheese, and they’ll make you eggs too.
The breakfast room is on the second floor overlooking the street, and I when I heard a few car horns, I looked out. Our taxi is downstairs waiting for us. I checked with the front desk guy and he said 6 o’clock, so I feel comfortable not rushing.
At about 6, we go outside and the taxi driver helps us get the bags into the car. We whisk off to the Cusco airport, which, at this time of day, and from this side of town takes 8 minutes.
The driver drops us off at the LATAM door, and holy hell its a madhouse in here. I take a moment to collect myself, see an open bag tag kiosk, and get us our tags. From there, its a very short bag drop off line, and I have no idea what all those other people are doing in other lines. Perhaps they didn’t check in online?
We ditch our water from our bottles, which I have a feeling is not necessary in this part of the world, and go upstairs through security. Again, its a breeze to get through, and now we are basically in the gate area with about two hours to spare.
Nathan rests and I wrote up yesterday for the blog. I was really enjoying myself (sometimes I really get into it), and with about 40 minutes left, I tell Nathan we should move closer to gate 4, which is where our plane is supposed to depart from. As we get closer, a LATAM gate agent is asking us if we are on flight 2006. She’s rushed and wanting us to hurry. Final boarding she says. I was like no, we have 40 minutes, but alas, we were ushered on board.
We find our seats and settle in for our flight to Lima. The guy next to Nathan must be some kind of local celebrity, because he has his hood up, and faces Nathan the majority of the trip. One of the flight attendants tell him they love his work, and before we deplane, covertly dropped him a bag of goodies. Not sure what you can get from a plane that a celebrity might want, but it reminds us of our honeymoon when the American Airlines flight attendants squirreled us out a bottle of champagne.
In Lima, we exit the plane and exit the secure area. There is no option to stay secure and stay in the terminal for connecting flights, so we walk past baggage claim, past the ticket counters, up to security, drink up all our water, which was not necessary, and into the gate area. That used up most of the hour + we had for this layover. It’s only 10:30 or so and while we had planned to grab a lunch here, now we no longer feel we have the time.
By 11, we are boarding our flight to Iquitos. On board the plane, I write a Tripadvisor review so that I can get it posted before we head to the Amazon. We also eat up yesterday’s gigantic cherimoya.
We land in Iquitos at 1:35, and exit the plane and down the stairs to the tarmac (no jetbridge). We are in full winter gear, layers, down vests, and this place is tropical. Maybe 80 degrees and 100% humidity. We walk behind the plane to the baggage claim area and wouldn’t you know, our bags are coming round the belt. DIA could learn a thing or two.
A man with a baggage cart at first says ‘Maria’ as we walk by, quickly followed by the Spanish version of Anika. We turn around. He collects us and Maria’s party, and walks us outside of the airport and to our waiting cab. And a tip for me? he says. Nathan gives him his pocket change and off we go with our waiting driver.
Holy cow. The streets of Iquitos are chaotic. I’ve never seen so many tuk tuks in one city before. It took maybe 30 minutes to get to our hotel, Casa Morey. The rate I was quoted for this ride was 45 soles, or more than double the rate from the Cusco airport to the old town center. I hand the driver, who is quite friendly, a 50 sole bill. He only has 1 sole for change, and our hotel won’t give him change, which seems a little weird to me. He says he will go and get change and leave my 4 soles with the front desk. $1.08 USD, but he comes back while we are still in the lobby and gives me my 4 soles.
We are at the Casa Morey hotel, which I booked, and is a surprise to Nathan. Completed in 1913, it looks straight out of Karen Blixen’s ‘Out of Africa’. The hotel is what we would call British Colonial, with 16-18 foot ceilings, imported Scottish steel columns, Portuguese tile and is freaking amazing. It has an interior courtyard with a pool and our room is gigantic. Too bad we are only staying here one night. It not only has a fan, it has AC.
We change into appropriate clothing, pack a backpack and venture out. It’s Sunday, so not a lot is happening, but we see the Amazon river and walk through the colonial area of town.
We decided to go back to the hotel to regroup. This town seems less touristy than Cusco, so we decide on a few places for dinner in case one or more is not open.
Our first choice pizza shop was not open, but we stumbled upon anther restaurant that was not on our list. They serve pizza, so we decide to give it a shot. We struggled a bit with the menu, it was on a e-reader, and only in Spanish. The font was tiny.
We decided on pizza, which was delicious. After dinner, we walked back to our room, and went to bed early, with fan and AC on.