Last days in Peru

After seeing plenty of ruins by foot already, we decided to go and see some parts of the Sacred Valley that we hadn't seen yet, by horse. A car took us to the departure point, 15min from Cusco center and we set off with two quite old horses... and a teenager guide who followed us by foot... so you can imagine the speed we advanced... The tour was nice, we went through eucalyptus forest and stopped at the Temple of the Moon and couple other ruins before the rain started. Once the thunder came closer we decided to cut the tour short and head back to the stables. And so we spent the afternoon hanging out in Cusco.

The next day Steph wanted to go to do some river rafting, but Jo's back is not in good enough shape for it (yet). So at 9am Steph took off with an all day excursion, two hours of bus, three hours in the river, lunch and back in the late afternoon. In the meanwhile Jo continued on shopping (hei, gotta use those last soles!!) and visiting a couple of inka-museums that were included in the tourist ticket that we had bought for the Sacred Valley. Cusco really is a nice city with plenty of cafes and little court yard shops selling anything and everything. In the evening we went for a dinner and drink in the San Blas neighbourhood, before heading to bed for an early rise for a flight to Lima.

Flight to Lima left at 8am, so we got there early in the morning. The airport of Lima is quite far outside of the city, but we managed to negociate a taxi (because we waited a third person to go to the same destination)for 35 soles to Miraflores. A trip that takes easily an hour... The weather was very cloudy when we arrived but it cleared up for the afternoon, so we decided to go explore Lima a bit. The traffic is horrible, anywhere you want to go, you need to take a taxi and be ready to get stuck on the roads. We started off from Barranco, a neighbourhood well known and not so far from Miraflores. In the guide book they talked about "Excotic Garden" in the central park... either we were not in the right place (which we are 99% sure that we were) or the "Excotic Garden" is made of three different cactus... Anycase we continued for lunch in a nice restaurant with a sea view and very cheap Sangria... and from there to the beach. The beach was nice, not many people, water temperature was ok for swimming (according to Steph) but there were too many rocks that the waves threw around that it was too dangerous to get in the water. In the evening we went for dinner in a very chic restaurant in Lima (we put on our last clean clothes ;)) enjoyed good steaks and wine, since it was our last night in Lima and continued in a german owned bar to play billiards.

Last day in Lima was short, walked around, packed all our stuff, got the same taxi to the airport, although the price was negociated in advance at the airport he tried to ask some more, but no chance, since we didn't have anymore soles than what was the deal! Plane to Amsterdam was KLM, very nice, even in the economic class everyone had their own entertainment center, TV screen with plenty of movies to choose from and plenty of music channels. The flight was long, but as usual we slept most of it... Finally the next day in the evening we made it to Nice. Big thank you for our friends who came to pick us up from the airport, although Jo's friend was in a wrong terminal and without cell phones it took awhile to find each other and Steph's friend showed up like 45 min late... Good to be home!!!! :)