Our last day of the Galapagos, as well as Ecuador, and our first day of Peru turned out to the be the longest day of our trip. Not only was it long due to waiting at various airport with their different timelines and attitudes to punctuality but also due to the long spell of lack of sleep we had on the trip, which is saying something considering ourearly Galapagos starts and 24 hour travel to Mexico.

This day was pretty long which is why I thought that it needed it’s own post entirely, unfortunately we don’t any photos of this ordeal either. The next post will be about Peru afterwards and will include some lovely photos.

As mentioned in our Galapagos post, we had to wait at the Galapagos airport (Santa Cruz) for a couple of hours so we decided to walk around which as you can imagine isn’t much, however having said that the airport was definitely better than many others that we had been on the trip overall. We decided to grab some food at one of the two cafes. We sat down and had an empanada, which turned out to be very good, so we bought another. The interesting thing, for me at least, was that there weren’t any pigeons, perhaps not a surprise but the role of the pigeon (i.e. a scavenger bird not afraid of people) had been filled by the Darwin Finches. These little black birds hope about looking for the left over food left at the tables. Surprisingly yet again, there doesn’t appear to be any controls to stop them (we had lots of speeches about protecting the habitat from external influences and here we had a clear violation – ironic).

Eventually we got going and flew to Quito, this time we had a direct flight. We arrived on time, the one time where we actually would probably prefer to be delayed as we had a long wait at the airport. We arrived at the airport in the late afternoon and had to kill about 4 hours for our flight at 8pm. We thought it wasn’t worth trekking into Quito as it takes an hour there and back. In addition we felt we had seen enough of the town. Therefore we sat and waited. I managed to draw some money from my other account, which is pretty much the highlight of the waiting time, not saying much is it.

Eventually we get to board and we fly off to Lima, finally a change of scenery. We were due to land at midnight but we had decided to fly straight to Cusco and see Lima on the way out. An item that I took for granted in Europe is flexibility meaning that if you want to fly in the morning, afternoon or evening you generally can. In South America there are only one or two flights and they pretty much all leave early in the morning. For us this meant we had a flight at 6am which meant we had, again, a couple of hours to kill at the airport. We decided to simply sleep an hour or two at the airport as the boarding should start around 5am which means by the time we land, collect our luggage and pass security we will probably only have 3 or 4 hours waiting. Silly us.

We landed on time at Lima but took an hour to pass the passport control. We were pretty thankful that didn’t have a connecting flight now as the line was massive and there appears to be a relaxed attitude to getting everyone through. In the line we noticed that many people appeared to be Americans but there were also many South Americans such as Brazilians and Argentinians too, which we thought was interesting. After the long wait we passed through with no issues and collected our bags. We then started our long wait.

We walked into the airport that was simply a single building for arrivals and departures. We   thought we would be able to check-in at desk which meant that we didn’t have to lug around our bags all night, however after waling around we noticed that all the check-in desks were closed. What got us a bit worried was that there wasn’t even a Peruvian Airlines desk, the airline we were to fly with. It turns out the at desks are reused by different airlines, as there were no flights at that time there was no branding present.

We decided to get some food and a coffee to wake us up, we were hoping they would open around 3am. We ordered some coffee and basic food to eat at the only café in the airport, luckily it was 24 hours. There were actually many people at the airport – there were groups of people who seemed to be together who occupied all the chairs. We decided after the meal that we should try to sleep for an hour or two. We set up a make shift bed with our bags and used our towel as a blanket. It was surprisingly cold in the airport (Peru is pretty chilly generally). It was hard to sleep when it was cold but we managed to at least rest at one point the entire group of people randomly decided to wake up, and move their chairs together to about 10 metres forward. It was much like a school of fish changing direction in the ocean, there was no conversation but so well orchestrated. We couldn’t understand what or why they were doing, we still don’t know what that was about or even why they were there. We don’t believe they were homeless but it didn’t seem to be that they were waiting either. I suppose it will always be a mystery.

So after waiting a few hours we decided to move to the check-in desk area, there was a security guard, again not sure why. We waited on the chairs for a while but due to the guard, whenever we needed to go to the toilet we would need to walk outside and enter via the next entrance. Again, we have no idea why it just seemed pointless to us. Anyways, so eventually it was time to check-in. Finally! The check-in desks started their preparations, which took them close to an hour, at point there were 5 people around but only 1 person doing anything. After a few minutes there was already a line of people looking to check-in spanning about 50metres, being so long that it intervened with the other airlines check-in lines, which of course their lines would then also span across to other lines and so on. People waiting in this long line were assuming that one line for all flights but this was not the case but again, there was no announcement of this which means that eventually it was spread by word of mouth that there actually should be a line for each flight (there were about 4 flights at this time). Izaskun asked the attendant where each line should go. He said that there were different lines. “yes, but where do we go?”. His response was that he didn’t know and that he had to ask around.

As you can imagine we were pretty tired and getting grumpy especially as the locals seem to like to push. We luckily managed to guess the correct line and due to the chaos were about 4^th in line.  It took a while to check-in customers, something like 10 minutes per person. Once we arrived to the front we were immediately informed that we will be delayed by 3 hours, therefore the flight will be leaving at 9am. To make things worse the lady told us that the airport told us about this before the check-in which was not the case. We were at the airport since midnight and there wasn’t anything mentioned. The lady then said it was a technical issue. She was of course lying. We suspect that the flight was overbooked and since we didn’t perform the check-in online we were last on the list.  We were also not provided with any vouchers or information on what we can do in the meantime.

This was the final straw, we were truly angry. Izaskun asked to write a complaint, the air stewardess looked surprised. Perhaps no one ever complaints, she sent her on a mission to find out how to complain.  She found out that there is a book that all complaints need to be written into, there is copy which we keep afterwards. Izaskun wrote the complaint and asked if we could have a meal voucher, the lady reluctantly gave us a voucher for a “breakfast” for two at a cafe.

 

On a side note, the following is the response we received about 3 weeks after writing the complaint:

Letter from Peruvian Airlines in response to our complaint…

Estimado Señor Kolowski:

De nuestra consideración.-

La presente tiene por finalidad saludarlo cordialmente y a su vez manifestarle que tenemos conocimiento de los inconvenientes experimentados por usted el pasado 26 de septiembre, con referencia a nuestro vuelo 220.

Junto con solicitar a usted nuestras más sinceras disculpas por las molestias ocasionadas.

Debemos señalar que una de las principales preocupaciones de Peruvian es el estricto cumplimiento de los itinerarios,  asimismo, la importancia del tiempo de sus pasajeros.

Sin embargo, apelamos a su comprensión, ya que no estamos exentos a que nuestros vuelos se vean afectados por motivos operacionales imprevistos y ajenos a nuestra voluntad, que nos impiden cumplir con el itinerario establecido.

Por todo ello, Peruvian Airlines cumple con la prioridad de velar por la seguridad de sus pasajeros y sus aeronaves.

Le agradecemos por escribirnos ya que sus comentarios constituyen un valioso aporte para mejorar el servicio que día a día nos esforzamos por entregar a nuestros pasajeros y esperamos considere esta situación como una excepción en nuestros estándares de servicio.

Lamentamos los inconvenientes experimentados por usted y esperamos poder atenderlo a bordo de nuestras aeronaves, esta vez a su entera satisfacción.

Atentamente,

Servicio al cliente

This translated goes along the lines of the following:

 

Dear Mr Kozlowski

From our consideration. –

This is intended to cordially greet and in turn express that we know of the problems experienced by you on 26 September, with reference to our flight 220.

Along with request to you our sincere apologies for the inconvenience.

We note that one of the main concerns of Peruvian is the strict enforcement of the itineraries also the importance of time of your passengers.

However, we appeal to your understanding, and we are not exempt from our flights are affected by operational reasons unforeseen and beyond our control that prevent us from complying with the schedule established.

Therefore, Peruvian Airlines meets with the priority of ensuring the safety of their passengers and aircraft.

Thank you for writing and his comments are a valuable contribution to improving the service that every day we strive to provide our passengers and hope you will consider this as an exception in our service standards.

We regret any inconvenience experienced by you and hope to attend on board our aircraft, this time to your satisfaction.

Sincerely,

Customer service

In summary: thank you for your letter but whatever.

 

So after our experience of checking in we finally were able to leave our bags and move on upstairs. As we had the voucher we decided to have something to eat or even better a coffee to drink. We found the café that the voucher was valid for. Once we spoke to the lady at the café and explained what we were told by the check-in desk, the lady seemed to be confused but she eventually said fine. We weren’t hungry so we asked if we could have a Pineapple juice, as we were thirsty – because we couldn’t drink any tap water, and a coffee each. They gave us what we wanted but when we asked for milk for the coffee the lady told us that is something we would have to pay extra for. At first we thought it was a joke but it wasn’t. She explained that, when flying milk is never provided in coffee, clearly she hadn’t flown before. There was a 2-minute conversation around this but eventually we gave up. Of course, when I say “we” I really mean Izaskun did all the talking, I was pretty lost half the time with the rapid Spanish and foreign accents that I only had about 50% understanding rate.

We sat down to drink our pure coffee, laughing at how crazy this airport was and wondering what could happen next… This was unfortunately only the beginning. For about 30 minutes we sat there until we decided to proceed to security, the next hurdle. Apart from a bit of confusion on which line we were to queue in, it went well. Now we were ready to wait the additional 3 hours. It was starting to get light but it was still cold, the airport was busy. We looked for our new flight on the screens but it was not there, we figured that it would appear closer to the time. We wandered the various gates looking for any clues as to where we should wait but there was nothing. We couldn’t find any airline representatives and the information desk didn’t know what was going on. We ended up walking around for about 2 hours looking where to go. 9am came and past with no news, this was now 28 hours for us being awake with no sleep, which meant us being grumpy and very annoyed. Eventually around 9.15am we saw that the airline was preparing something, this was our opportunity (as well as other desperate travellers) to pounce and ask what was going on. Again, it seemed a surprise to them that passengers would like to know what is going on. She said that we had arrived at the right place and that flight will be board in about 30 minutes. We then all started to queue, as people like to do. Eventually the boarding commenced and we were finally on our way.

The flight wasn’t eventful, thankfully. We managed to have a bit of a snooze but as we started arriving into Cusco we noticed the amazing views of continuous mountains of the area. A few minutes we were on the ground looking to see where the bags will appear.

Cusco airport was pretty modest with two large rooms, one room serving as a baggage claim, taxi stand, information area and dance floor. Yes, there were locals doing their traditional dancing, who I am pretty sure if just for the tourists but they loved it so pretty wise of them. We were too tired to care at this stage so all we wanted to do was collect our luggage. There was no signs or indication where this come from. The dance floor was literally in the middle of other baggage belt so it turned into quite a problem to even walk around with the masses of people. Izaskun did the run around asking airport staff where it would be but they didn’t know, no-one seemed to know anything. Eventually bags started to appear on the one belt. We looked at the other paper tags on the bags and it appeared to be the same as our flight. Good news, we waited and got our bags, we were ready to see Peru.

We had arranged a pick up from the hotel we were staying at who were actually there, we were getting really cynical on how things worked by this stage. We were quickly transported from the airport through town and eventually to the hotel without any issues. It was a first for us on the day that we actually had no issues. As you can imagine, we were exhausted. We just wanted to sleep. There was no stopping us, as soon as we got to the room we passed out for a couple of hours. We both fell into deep sleep in a matter of seconds. We woke up about 4 hours later thinking that we should try to sleep that evening otherwise we will not be able to sleep later, we decided that it would be good if we go for a walk and get some food as we hadn’t eaten a proper meal since we have arrived.

We found on the Internet for a place called Limo. It was only a 5 / 10 minute from our hotel. We decided that it was the place to try as it had good reviews and it was ideally close. We headed off to the Plaza de Armas, which is the main town square through the narrow side streets. We ended walking around the entire square and just as we were about to give up, we saw the place. Pretty lucky.

We were feeling pretty tired at this stage, in addition we were starting to feel the attitude sickness that is to be expected. For those of you who are not aware, Cusco is 3,400 metres above sea level, which makes it harder for your body to obtain oxygen. We were experiencing the classic symptoms including feeling tired (even more than the lack of sleep), headaches and short of breath. Perhaps we were just unfit, we joked how Machu Picchu will probably kill us if this stroll around town tired us.

The restaurant was upstairs and totally different to how I expected it to be. It was modern and fitted very well. We managed to grab a table where we proceeded to have a cocktail each, perhaps not the best idea when tired but we figured we were going to sleep anyways, so why not. Fortunately the restaurant offered some local cuisine. I ate a Guinea pig while Izaskun had some Alpaca (somewhat like a small llama) which both turned out to be very good.

After some food and drink it was time for us to call it a, long, day. We headed home and proceeded to sleep in a matter of minutes. The next day was the first proper day in Peru.