Sunday was largely a travel day for us, starting in the morning in Lima and heading for Cusco, one of the major Andean cities located roughly 12,000 feet above sea level , and the historic heart of the Inca empire. While the ride to the airport was uneventful and our time at the airport was memorably only for the remarkable number of Chick Taylors’ on display, the flight to Cusco was one of the most challenging of TBJ’s young life. For the first time, TBJ had a truly bad flight. The good news is that we were surrounded by families, other than two poor souls with window seats in rows in which all 5 other seats held at least one kid and to old, well, assholes, in the first row. For most of the flight TBJ had no issues whatsoever. However, we could not get him to take a bottle once we started our descent about 25 minutes out (on a 1 hour flight). As a result, poor TBJ couldn’t equalize his ear pressure, which resulted in 20 minutes of the loudest, most agonized crying I’ve heard from him. Making it even more difficult, there was absolutely nothing that The Lady or I could do to help the little guy. I have never felt so helpless.
Thankfully everyone near us (other than the old assholes, apparently) had been in the same position at one point or another, so when the plane landed there was an unspoken agreement to keep the aisles clear until the Lady could rush off with TJB. I collected our stuff, fantasized about kidney punching the old asshole to the point that a couple of the other young fathers on the flight actually gave me the “chill out, dude – you would be justified, but it’s not worth it” look (which is universal and carries across cultures or languages), and headed off the plane. By the time I found the Lady, TBJ was happily running around, the Lady was smiling, and our people from the VIP lounge had already met them to pick up our luggage tags, escort us to the lounge, and get our luggage, while our Orient Express guide explained the next part of our trip and we drank cocao tea to acclimatize to 12,000 feet. I believe I mentioned that we brought the swank to this trip, and this is the point at which it really started to pay off.
The initial plan called for us to visit a market in a town called Pisac, then descend further into the Sacred Value to the Rio Sagrado Hotel, have lunch, then visit an enormous Inca site in the town of Ollantaytambo. Given the stress of the flight and TBJ’s obvious reaction to the altitude, however, we opted to head straight for the hotel, take the afternoon off, and visit Ollantaytambo on Monday. This proved wise, as Rio Sagrado Hotel is quite simply the most spectacular hotel I’ve had the pleasure of visiting. Cut into the hillside by the Ulubambo river, the hotel is stunning, both in its surroundings and in its elegant design. Most importantly for us, it has a huge garden where TBJ could run to his heart’s content and your Blogger and the Lady could do our best to keep up with him while winding easily due to the 9000 foot altitude.
After much frolicking, attempts to fall into the river, the numerous fountains, or any other available water, and a walk through the Rio Sagrado’s remarkably extensive flower gardens, we had an excellent dinner and called it a night on one of the longest days of the trip.
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