Lima to Cusco - High altitude travel

We've been in Peru close to four weeks already and in a few days we are crossing the border to Bolivia,  so time for and update on our adventures in the land of the Inka's.

Feasting in Lima.

We arrived in Lima on a grey and foggy day, which made our first impression rather bleak. Not that it wasn't expected,  this kind of fog apparently decend on Lima more or less everyday from March to November. Why would the Spanish pick this place to start a city, you ask? Lima was founded by Fransisco Pizzaro in January (in the year of 1535, if you must know), and it must have taken him a little while to realise that the fog was there to stay. After Cairo it is also the driest capital city in the world.
What Lima hasn't got going for it in the climate department,  it makes up for in the food department. Lima may not be the first place you think of when you think foodie cities, but with two restaurants in the top 20 best restaurants in the world (France has one in top 20), loads of yummy and oh so fresh ceviche spots and a tradition for using influences from Spanish,  African and Asian cuisine, you can't go wrong. Needless to say we overdosed on food and washed it down with a pisco or two. One night we went out with Sharon and Juan Pablo, the sister and brother in law of friends from Denmark. While our budget didn't allow for the top options, we did go to Tanta, a restaurant chain run by Gaston Acurio, Peru's Heston Blumenthal.

The main goal for most visiting Peru, is the old Inka town of Cusco and the Machu Picchu ruins, also for us,  but instead of jumping on a comfortable sleeper bus and high tailing it directly to Cusco, an impromptu train trip found us slowly nearing Cusco, via a series of smaller Andean towns and the rather dodgy roads that connects them.
The train trip turned out to be one of the many unexpected highlights of our trip. The line connects Lima, on the coast, with the city of Huancayo in the Andes. The trip is around 370 kilometers,  takes 12 hours and passes the highest railway station in the world, at 4871 meters above sea level (It was the highest railway in the world until the Chinese finished the line to Tibet in 2006). To get to this altitude we passed through 69 tunnels, crossed 58 bridges and zig-zag'ed our way through 6 switch backs.
From the dry hills surrounding Lima, the landscape became greener and more fertile as we climbed. Near the top the mountains became bare, with snow on the top and a light sleet came down as we crossed the highest pass.
Meanwhile we were comfortably tucked up in our seats,  with a nurse and an oxygen bottle on call, should we feel a bit light headed from the altitude.

Onwards from Huancayo, we boarded a bus to the small and pleasent town of Ayacucho. The trip went through the mountains on a very narrow road. I had a window seat and several times I couldn't see the road, just the cliff side plunging towards the river at the bottom.
We spent a few sunny days in Ayacucho, enjoying the view of the main plaza and the mountains, from the second floor balcony restaurant, that almost became our home. You could think that a town that has more parades and festivals than days in the year, would be a cheery place to live,  and it probably is a lot better these days, but from 1980-2000, the town and the region was the epicentre of the horrible domestic terrorism that killed an estimated 70,000 people, mainly poor indians. In town we visited a small museum run by some very brave women, who all lost husbands and sons during that period, a very sobering experience.
Our last leg to Cusco, was to be a mere 16 hours bus ride, again on narrow and in parts unsealed roads. The 16 hours became 19, before we finally arrived to what the Inka's called the navel of the world.

More on Cusco and our trek to Machu Picchu in the next post.