The Journey West

Again, we`re a bit behind our postings and don´t have a whole lot of time at the moment, but i thought I would just mention quickly how we got from the beaches of Brasil to the ancient Inca Capitol city, Cusco.

You might remember that we were in Recife for three days and I look at that as sort of a "layover", since a good portion of that we were in the airport. Anyway, Jen and I left Recife on a plane at about 10am bound for Santa Cruz, Bolivia, but before we touched down in Santa Cruz, we flew to Salvador, then Rio de Janeiro, then Sao Paulo with a 6 hour layover, then to Campo Grande, where we went through customs and about an hour layover. From Campo Grande we landed in Santa Cruz, Bolivia around 2am the next morning. We decided that we really needed to get to Cusco; one, it was as far north in Peru as we were going, and two, the jumping off point for Machu Picchu, the glorious once forgotten Inca city in the clouds. That night was spent in the airport, so that we could catch the 7am flight to La Paz, under the impression (impression the Lonely Planet Guide Book gave) we could easily find a flight to Cusco. We make it on to the flight, arrive in La Paz around 9am and find that the only way to get to Cusco is via bus and the last bus has already left the station for the day, so we decide to grab a night sleep and take the first bus the next morning. We wake bright and early the next morning, hop on the bus, and arrive in Cusco a short 11 hours later... a very lovely city and a leg of our trip that has been one of the biggest highlights.

Thought it was a quick story worth mentioning, we posted a few more pictures and stay tuned for more postings. --mike