Tuesday 29 September:

Itinerary: Morning flight Lima to Cuzco. Transfer from Cuzco to hotel out of town in dramatic and interesting nearby Sacred Valley, at over 2800 metres above sea level in the Andes. These wonderful mountains tower over us for the next few days. Option of short afternoon introductory walk for local birds, plants, culture and history. Hotel accommodation.


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After a fairly leisurely start to the morning we walked back across the road to the airport for our flight to Cusco. This was very interesting as by chance we had Juan, our local guide who had kindly come to Lima to meet the group, sitting next to us. He was able to explain a few things to us (eg the long rows of buildings in the valleys on the Western side of the Andes were chook farms). The flight was OK – we did a few circuits to get in, but this seemed to be due to traffic not bad weather.

We were greeted by an Andean band in the termnal (much more appropriate than in Grand Central of New York or the Duomo in Florence), and a brass band in the car park where we boarded a bus. It took a little while to get to the main square, which was not surprising when one realised that greater Cusco is now some 600,000 people. The traffic was reasonably chaotic and it was stressed that pedestrians have no rights. (While that advice was very sound,in fact it was not unusual for drivers to stop for people to cross.) While pausing in the square to change money we saw some of Peru's very pretty national flower - the Cantua.  Here is a legend about it from Wikipedia.

We had a great lunch at a restaurant owned by Juan's family, including our first taste of coca tea (purely to mitigate altitude sickness) then off towards the Sacred Valley.

We stopped en route at a cameloid farm where the owner had Llamas (pronounced yamas or jamas); alpacas, vicunas and guanocos. As evident from background in the photo (intended just to be of Frances feeding an alpaca) they breed these animals. The place also sold local arts and crafts with the production facility visible on site.

Like most Peruvian houses this place had two ceramic bulls mounted on the roof to bring good luck. In some places the owners hedge their theistic luck by including a cross of some description. Had they not been likely to get broken over the trip we would certainly have acquired a pair of these.

This also provided an opportunity to get started on the Peruvian birds and I recorded 6 lifers at this stop.

We ended up driving through the dark on what seemed a narrow and twisty road. We finished going down a grotty track to a great hotel where we scored a very excellent room overlooking the river. A very tasty evening meal was presented and we were advised to be up at 6am for birding in the grounds.

Itinerary delivered - possibly overachieved - in every regard.