Moving Day: Cusco to Asheville
From Peru, our journey back to the United States involved an overnight in Lima. Spending the night locally prior to a long international flight is my little contingency plan in case something goes wrong (see our Madrid Blackout story for an example of when this conservative approach really paid off).
I enjoyed taking photos out the airplane as we left Cusco. But after we reached cruising altitude, it was all clouds until we descended over the Pacific Ocean and landed in Lima.
In Lima, we relaxed at our hotel in Milaflores., then took a walk along the path at the top of the cliffs overlooking the ocean. We crossed the Puente de la Paz (Bridge of Peace) and then turned back, enjoying the people-watching and the view. There was another cloudy sunset, much like the one from when we first arrived here six weeks ago.
We also enjoyed our last few meals in Peru: chifa at Kion (another branch of the Peruvian-Chinese place we had liked in Cusco); the classic sandwich pan con chicharrón at La Lucha; and Palta Reina (Queen Avocado) at Ché Chá, which was a magical avocado with a perfectly poached egg inside.
Finally, we headed to Lima’s new Jorge Chávez International Airport for our overnight flight to Atlanta. I was impressed by the state-of-the-art security scanners - thirteen of them, all in a row! In theory, these would allow passengers to skip security screening in the United States before boarding connecting flights. Ironically, our bags were searched a second time - manually - at the gate before we boarded our plane. [Shrug]
It was an uneventful flight, but we didn’t get much sleep. At the Atlanta airport, we rented a car for the four hour drive to Asheville, enjoying the fine weather and the scenery along the highway. These lush, green foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains were VERY different from the coastal desert sand dunes and the super-tall Andes! Our six weeks in Peru had been amazing, but it was nice to be stateside again.
