No One Wants to Spend the Night in Lima, part 2

I've been waiting for quite some time to have visitors, and while that wait was made a bit longer due to airline screw-ups, it's finally over.

My parents and sister were suppose to arrive in Cusco around 7:30am on Saturday morning. They didn't get here until 2pm Sunday afternoon. Turns out, a certain American Airlines changed their flight schedule, and made it impossible to make their connection in Lima. Doesn't seem like it would be too much of a problem, considering there is a flight from Lima to Cusco every half hour, right? Not so much. It's a holiday weekend in July, and everyone and their mother, brother, sister, great-uncle, and fifth cousin twice removed is apparently coming to Cusco. Mom and Dad were schedule on a sure-thing for Sunday afternoon, but it was looking like Holli wasn't going to make it until Monday. After a lot of determination, (arriving at the airline office at 3:30am to get in line) begging, and a very nice ticket agent named Sissy(hmm, appropriate I guess, considering that's what Holli used to call me), Holli arrived in Cusco about an hour after the parentals. Ah, the joys of traveling.

This *slight* delay in arrival seriously screwed up my to-do plans. Salsa class? Out the window. Moray and Salinas? Maybe next time. Luckily, thanks to some heavy duty altitude sickness medication, we were able to set out and see some sights right away. Walking...very...slowly... of course. Now we know that 12,000 ft is something that can actually slow my mom down.

While I'm happy to have them here, I think they better make some sort of sacrifice to the travel gods, as their trip seems to be karmicly doomed. Besides having to spend the night in Lima (and if anyone ever decides to publish my travel adventures, the name of the book will be No one Wants to Spend the Night in Lima. Consider that trademarked, or copyrighted, or whatever.), we realized that their travel itinerary had also been changed without warning. So now they're in Machu Picchu today, while I am spending a perfectly good day off at home, and their tour of the Sacred Valley (which I am supposed to be joining them on) is on Thursday, when I have to work. And yesterday, on our city tour, it rained. It hasn't rained in Cusco for 3 months. The rain left the weather chilly and damp, the coldest day I can remember.

Despite the bad luck, we're having a good time. I took them to San Pedro, where there were multiple pig's heads waiting for them, and the woman behind them was using a huge cleaver, ala Lizzie Bordon. I introduced them to alpaca burgers, which they all agreed tasted like really good hamburgers, and cooked them dinner in my little apartment. (The theme of the evening seemed to be, Wow, can you believe Kelli cooked vegetables?)

We still plan on spending the night in Lima this weekend, but hopefully Lima will be better to all of us this time around.