Lauren: Beth and I rolled into Lima and headed for the city center, bypassing what looked to be the hip, cool area of the city, Miraflores, because we thought that my friend Ruth and her friend Mary would be doing her summer internship downtown. We also saw that there was a “gay friendly” hotel, the first we had seen on our trip, so we thought we’d go and contribute our dollars to the cause.

We checked in to our plush room (with the highest cielings I’ve ever seen), and went to check email. Ruth had emailed to let us know that she was in Miraflores, and that we should come meet her for Pisco Sours. Thrilled, we decided we’d move the next day to Miraflores, and set out to meet Ruth and Mary. (more…)

We got into Cusco 15 minutes early at around 4:45am, amazingly, despite having multiple delays that included getting pulled over and raided by the authorities (See It’s Not All Fun and Games). We weren’t quite clear that we had reached our final destination, since many locals continued to snooze and the bus was still running.

We decided to ask someone and learned that we had in fact arrived. I nearly bowled over several sleepy Bolivian woman slowly wrapping up their multitude of items in blankets as I rushed out to claim our (please, God, let them still be there) bags. After praising Jesus, I grabbed our things and waited for Beth to de-bus while I watched a drunken brawl that looked sort of like a frat hazing taking place across the street.

We jumped in a taxi and were dropped off sort of near our hostel in the main square. We looked around and were shocked to hear loud music thumping away and drunken foreigners stumbling down the street on a still-in-progress pub crawl. It was 5am. (more…)

On our expensive bus ride to La Paz, we were rudely awakened at 2am and told we’d have to change buses because our bus had to go back to Uyuni.  We swapped our luggage and seats with a busload of people who were heading the opposite way.  We tried unsuccessfully to get back to sleep.  We were annoyed, but what we didn’t know is that the next two bus rides would be even worse.

We had bought our bus tickets to Cusco from a travel agent in Copacabana.  Semi-cama, she had promised.  Tourist bus, she offered.  It was $10, I said to Lauren, “how could we go wrong?” (more…)