Downpour!

By the time you are reading this, we will be somewhere up in the Peruvian Andes. We are being picked up at 4:45am for a 3 hour bus ride to the trailhead for the Laguna 69 hike.

This is a popular hike that leads to a turquoise glacial lake located at 15,000 ft elevation. Are we ready for that? Not sure, but I guess we'll find out today!

Our first day hike in Peru

We are at the beginning of the rainy season here, but that doesn't mean that it rains all day long. In fact yesterday we woke up to sunshine and blue skies. Perfect for our first hike in Peru.

There is a pre-Incan ruins site about 6 kms (3.7 miles) from our residence. And it's an uphill climb of about 1,300 feet in that distance, so it would be good exercise and we would see how our bodies are adjusting to the altitude.

A little bit of excitement last night

We are at the beginning of the rainy season here at the base of Huascarán National Park. Prime hiking months are apparently June, July, and August when you get mostly clear blue skies. So while we do get some sunshine through the day, it is mostly cloudy and there is a good chance of a shower every day as well.

We are getting our bodies used to the fact that we are at 10,000 ft altitude. Most of the good hiking is upwards of 12,000 ft, so it is good to take a couple of days to get used to the thinner air.

We didn't expect this scenery

Most people who have never visited Peru have only a vision of Machu Picchu in their minds when they think of Peru. We were the same, of course, because we had never been here either.

So we were somewhat surprised to learn that the city of Lima and the surrounding area is all desert. That's one of the reasons there are very few trees in the city itself, and it's such a dusty dirty city.

Four dollars well spent!

One thing that we have learned about the city of Lima is that it takes forever to get anywhere. Traffic is horrendous, and while we've enjoyed our three days here, three days was enough for us. We probably could have done one more day in the downtown core, which would have been fine if we were actually staying in the downtown core. But we were not.

Most tourists who come to visit Lima stay in the "Miraflores" neighborhood. But Miraflores is an exclusive residential and upscale shopping neighborhood. It's not really our style, and it's certainly not what we came to Peru for.

A busy day in Lima, Peru

Yesterday, we made our way to "el centro"... the downtown historical section of Lima. We had originally planned on taking the local bus, but it's not an easy system to figure out and even with our hosts help it seemed confusing.

Plus, Lima is a big dirty city of 8 million people, and not all areas are what could be considered safe for tourists. In fact, our Uber driver told us that "Lima is full of bad people".

Beautiful photos of Peru

I know you are expecting us to show you beautiful photos of Peru. And hopefully we will live up to your expectations one of these days, but it won't be today!

Yesterday was our first full day in Lima. We are staying in a nice place with a very friendly local family who do not speak any English.

Arrived in Lima, Peru... country #38

Lindsey drove us to Ottawa airport at 11:30am yesterday. Lots of time for our 2:00pm flight to Montreal. We find that time passes quickly in airports, and it's always better to arrive at an airport early than late!

Sure enough, we were soon boarding our "puddle jumper" flight to Montreal.

We are off to Peru!

Yesterday, one of our readers asked about our trip cancellation insurance.

We have been using a TD Travel Visa that includes a variety of insurance provided you use that Visa card to book your trip. Now, we have a Scotiabank Passport Travel Visa and it includes the same suite of insurance products. Interestingly, in all of our years of travel, we have never had to use cancellation insurance, and this year we have had to use it twice!

Our trip to Ecuador is cancelled!

We've been closely watching the escalation of problems in Ecuador.

Ecuador does not have their own currency. They use the U.S. dollar. While this provides a level of currency stability, it creates other problems. When a country has its own currency, they simply print more of it. However in this situation, the Ecuador government was running out of money, so they went to the International Monetary Fund and took out a loan of $4.2 billion.