Day 1: The Airport
We arrived exhausted at the Lima airport. Our flights were scheduled to arrive between 9:30 and 10:50 pm. We left the airport at 1 am. Steph was the first to arrive and bonded with our taxi driver. Mike and I arrived about 20 minutes late. Thanks to his very North American height (he’s one tall guy) Mike spotted Steph and our driver in the huge crowd waiting outside international baggage claim. Laurel’s flight was the last to arrive, continuing her New Orlean’s bad luck. If there is a storm somewhere, Laurel’s plane will be in its flight path. Most amazing was the Lima airport’s approach to publicizing delays — confirmado. Her flight was confirmado which is secret airport Spanish for “we have no idea when this flight is arriving.”
Day 2: Central Lima
Here we are on our fist day in Lima. (Imagine me behind the camera.) After breakfast we decided to take a walking tour of Central Lima. With guidebooks in hand we set out. We started at the Plaza Mayor. I don’t know what buildings these are, but the yellow ones surround the Plaza Mayor. And, I’m pretty sure the white one isn’t really called the Pizza Hut building. Mike’s tank is by the Parliament building. We tried to looked 
at some churches, but it was Sunday and mass was in session. The church at the San Francisco Convent
has a separate entrance to the museum and convent areas so we were able to take the tour without interrupting mass. Sadly, we weren’t allowed to take pictures, because our tour did pass through the actual catacombs lined with piles of bones, and at one point we were standing under the church and could hear the mass.
For lunch we hit Lima’s Chinatown. We had lunch at a Chifa and had our first guidebook letdown. Recommended restaurants were either very expensive or closed. We made the “lot’s of other people are eating here” choice after much waffling. The Peruvian fried rice was very yummy, (no soy sauce needed!) 
I had the chicken with tamarindo, which I believe was the only dish, besides the fried rice, that seemed particularly Peruvian-Chinese. The other unique feature of lunch was the Inca Kola. We all had a taste of Inca Kola, which is very sweet and has a sort of bubble-gum flavor, despite being yellow.
Day 3: Ollantaytambo
It was still pitch black out when the alarms and wake up calls started ringing. Our flight to Cusco was at 6 am and we needed to arrive at the airport two hours in advance. That’s 4 AM. Somehow we all made it to the lobby by 3:30 to load up the taxi. We got to the airport around four, there’s not a whole lot of traffic in Lima between 3:30-4:00 AM. There’s a long line at the ticket counter. The TACA ticket counter wasn’t open yet. We got there two hours early to wait for this? Eventually, we get through check-in, once the staff
arrived the line moved pretty quickly and next thing you know we were at the gate waiting. We got to wait quite a bit, with the get there two hours early business. We got to wait some more when we arrive in Cusco, because it turned out our Bed & Breakfast (the otherwise fabulous El Albergue) forgot to pick us up at the airport. We were sad and cold, none of the names on the signs at the airport were ours.
After getting settled in our rooms and not taking naps (remember the 3 am wake up calls) we head to town for lunch and tourist attractions. The restaurant turned out to be quite a find. I was stubborn and insisted we try Peruvian food. 
Steph tries the alpaca, and the first of many river trout is ordered. There are yummy sauces and slow but friendly service. If you look real close (or use the magnifying glass) you’ll see Mike and I were drinking different types of Cusquena beer. My was the light one, it tasted like bland American beer and Mike wass drinking the sweeter dark version. [I'll interject with a comment that as a non-beer drinker, I was having a refreshing limeade. Perhaps it was foreshadowing the Pisco sours to come! --Laurel]
Next stop tourist attractions. We swing by the tourist market (we haven’t started shopping yet) and embark on the first of many ruins tours. The Temple and Fortress in Ollantaytambo is one of the most significant and intact archaeological sites in Peru you probably never of heard of.
Tour of Ollantytambo Ruins and Fortress
None of our photos really capture the entrance to the ruins at Ollantytambo. The fortress is built into one of the mountains that surround the town of Ollantytambo. Today, tourists enter from the terraces on the far left and keep climbing, this set of stairs stagger (I guess to get you warmed up.) Once you reach the top you can walk through the rooms, some of which were ceremonial and others may have been residential. All have the mysterious cubbies and there are lots of the trapezoid doorways.
The views from the top of the ruin were gorgeous.
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