Saturday July Twenty-fifth
I awoke after only four hours of sleep which was really hard, but it was my last day here so I wanted to enjoy every minute! The first last thing I had to do was go the big cathedral in Plaza de Armas which I hadn't done yet because you can only get in for free during mass which was from seven until nine which was way to early for me! However today I dragged myself up and got there right on time which is practically a first for me. Here's a picture I found online of it
This was where the priest (apologies if that's the wrong title) was giving his sermon (apologies again) and it was just a really cool experience. There were tons of people there and it was interesting to see how different everyone was, old ladies were standing next to teenage boys, whole family units and single nobodies all came to worship their shared beloved faith. Catholicism here is like a type of blood that connects this whole country and feeds it's beating heart, and there is just something awesome about that!
I then went to a nearby café to have breakfast with U.S. Caroline and two new volunteers.
Monica & Sophia: A Spanish mother, Monica, and her daughter who grew up in California where they now live. Sophia is only fourteen. They were both really nice, awesome people! I think it's something about the fact that it takes a certain kind of person to travel all the way around the world to volunteer for the underprivileged that makes us all really like each other! I've never met such an awesome group of people! Oh so much nostalgia today!
After breakfast we decided to go horse back riding around some old Incan ruins called Saqsyhuaman just outside Cuzco. It would be a great way to start Monica & Sophia's trip and a really great way to end mine. It was so great to be around horses again, they say you can tell if someone's a horse rider if they smell horse poop and think it smells good, well I did, it's that grassy smell you know means horse riding is soon! I got a particularly sassy horse with the best name, Cappuccino, but sassy is nothing hard for me to deal with as the horse I ride back in Colorado is literally named Sassy, and boy does she live up to that. One of her favorite games to play is to run laps around the pasture when I'm trying to catch her. So rude.
We walked up this little steep path that wound it's way through the countryside where there was nothing but trees and the occasional rural house. It was just such a cool change to hear nothing but silence after being in the city where taxis honk to tell you they're empty, to tell you they're full, and whenever there is a car in front of them. The air was clean and fresh and I just loved it!
Me and Caroline happily on our horses!
Me and Caroline appreciating the view!
Caroline
We got back to the house around lunch time and I was planning to go help Caroline settle into her new home stay after lunch but irrational María told me I couldn't because it wasn't my house. I don't even know what that means or why that would have anything to do with it. I was actually pretty irritated at this point though because I really wanted to spend my last afternoon with Caroline, but there was no convincing her. Ugh!
Instead I went to get some more presents that I hadn't found yesterday from a market and Caroline was going to come after she was done settling in. However she never came as María had told us the wrong time that Caroline would be able to meet. So glad I'm leaving today, or I think our relationship would have deteriorated further. We said our goodbyes at the house even though she was going to drive me to the airport, and she said I was one of the best volunteers she's had and gave me a ceramic teapot with a bear sitting on it, and a coin purse, I gave her a card. Then we went to the airport.
I thought getting there an hour and a half before my domestic flight was pretty conservative but when I saw the length of the check-in line I thought it might not even be enough! The line was barely moving and it started to really worry me, I saw a representative of the airline walking down towards me and I was about to ask him but before I got the chance, he adressed everyone and told us that all flights had been cancelled. He didn't even give a reason her just said no one would be going anywhere. I was in shock. I had four connecting flights, four!
The problem was I wasn't going home, I was going to meet up with my family in L.A. and fly directly to New Zealand to visit my entire family as we always do once a year. I just couldn't even comprehend the terrible domino affects of missing this crucial first flight.
María luckily has had some experience with dealing with airport problems, having hosted so many foreign volunteers and pushed me right up to the front of the priority line, using my status as a minor to justify it, although it was only supposed to be for star alliance members. This line was ten times shorter but just as slow.
While I waited I started talking to a nice old couple behind me in Spanish. They had been told that the flights had been cancelled because of the sunset, the sunset? That happens every single day! It must of been an excuse for some other problem that they didn't want to tell us or something because that's ridiculous! Anyway I kept talking Spanish to them and I kind of wanted to see if I could make them believe I was Peruvian so I pretended to speak English very badly, they were originally from Minnesota. This was going great, and they even offered to try and use their star alliance card to help me out. Unfortunately then María came back and it was reviled that I was actually American and had been lying. This was especially awkward because they had just offered me the use of their card. I tried to brush it of as having been lost in translation but I'm not sure they bought it.
At the front of the line I had to sneakily slide over to the non-priority counter and the lady there took pity on my connecting flight situation and got me onto another flight that left about ten minutes later. So I ran like the wind, shoving aside people and suitcases (not really) cutting in line (again) at security (really) and going so fast that I forgot to take off my money belt which contained about thirty coins going through the metal detector, so I had to run back out to the end of the conveyor belt, grab a tray, threw my belt in it run to the front of the line, cut again, and put the tray on the belt and then run through the metal detector again. Meanwhile looking like a complete idiot the whole time.
I made it on just in time, and was the third to last. The two others who were about a minute behind me, and ran on without their shoes, were the nice old couple from Minnesota. They un-awkwardly got seats right next to and in front of me which was great... Oh Karma I'm sorry for duping old people!
The plane took off and it suddenly hit me that I was leaving Cusco! I looked down at the city I had fallen in love with and felt deeply sad, I even cried a little, and the whole time I was thinking of that John Denver song.
"Because I'm leaving on a jet plane
Don't know when I'll be back again
Oh Peru, I hate to go."
Well that's how I sang it anyway.
The flight I had originally planned was direct from Cusco to Lima and then I had three others, one from Lima to San Salvador, then San Salvador to L.A., and then L.A. to Rarotonga where we had a three day stop over before continuing to N.Z. However the one the Cusco flight person had booked me on was a connecting flight through Aerequipa (further south) to get to Lima (north of Cusco). So that was annoying, but at least I could sit with the old couple during my layover in Aerequipa. They told me all about their life as missionaries and all the crazy things they did!
Thanks for overlooking the whole I'm Peruvian thing Ruth and Bill!
Then the next flight to Lima, two of the now five flights that I had to take, and I got into Lima at around 10:30 but it felt much later due to the lack of sleep from last night. Then I walked over to a check-in machine as the counters didn't open until one am and so I used the machine, I scanned my passport in and it came up with my flights and I pressed check in, I thought that that would be enough, it told me at the very end to go to a counter and I assumed that meant so that I could check any bags I needed to. Happily I went and found a little nook between a wall and a shoe counter and settled in until one am.
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