Some Things Are Still Worth Seeing in Person

Our honeymoon began in Peru.  Rather than sit out a 7-hour layover at the Lima airport, we hired a driver from Lima Cabs in advance to give us an informative tour of the city.  We began in the old part of Lima, where we walked around Plaza San Martin.  We missed the protests against the pardon of ex-president Fujimori and the police tear gas which occurred in the same space 2 days later.  As they say, timing is everything.  Then, it was on to the Plaza de Armas and seeing some saints' skulls in a nearby church before heading to the upscale part of town, Miraflores, watching the surfers in the Pacific, and then making our way back to the airport.

After a hilarious Benny Hill-esque situation where the Lima Airport changed our gate 3 times in about 10 minutes, leading to a long line of people running from gate to gate, only to reverse themselves and run in the opposite direction, we boarded our flight to the southern city of Arequipa, which has a beautiful Plaza de Armas.  From there, we boarded the Belmond Andean Explorer train for two nights on our way to Cusco.

One of the dining cars aboard the Belmond Andean Explorer.

The Belmond Andean Explorer provides a great experience, with absolutely phenomenal service, great meals, and some stops for excursions on land.  On the route from Arequipa to Cusco, the train is moving during the first night.  In Europe (where I have slept on trains overnight) or America, that might not be a problem, but these rails are rougher, and the motion made it very hard to sleep for many of the passengers.  And, as this was our first night dealing with the altitude, we both required extra oxygen, which is available in the cabins.  Thus, my recommendation would be to take the route from Cusco to Arequipa, where the train stops both nights.

In any event, we highly recommend the train.  And I learned a lesson that served me well on the trip.  By discretely mentioning to the staff that this was our honeymoon, we were gifted the first of three bottles of champagne over the two weeks.

On our first full day on the train, we stopped at Lake Titicaca and boarded a boat to see the strange world of the Uros Islands, which are man-made islands of reeds inhabited by the Uros people for centuries.  After explaining to us the very laborious and complicated process used to make these islands (which house about 5-10 huts each -- and about 2,700 people in total), I pulled our guide aside and asked a question I didn't feel comfortable asking the islanders for fear of offending anybody: "Uh, why don't they just live in town?"  Apparently, it's all about evading property taxes.

The Uros Islands.  There's a woman on a cellphone in the boat in the left background.

The islanders live a simple life and sell their weavings and ceramics to tourists.  The best salespeople are the small children, as it's very hard to turn them down, and we did indeed return with a little boy's drawing.  At one point, Kathleen turned to me and asked if I thought any of them even knew who Donald Trump was.  The answer is probably no, giving us reason to admire the simplicity of their lives.  As I found in Bhutan a few years ago, however, modernity, as it always does, is creeping in.  I noticed a local woman in a boat on a cellphone.

Once in Cusco, we visited the Sacred Valley, and, eventually, the holy grail of Peruvian tourism, Machu Picchu.  I had wondered whether, after seeing photos of it hundreds of times, Machu Picchu could still be worth it.  Had I already seen everything there was to see on other people's Facebook feeds, YouTube, and, I assume, an Anthony Bourdain travel show?  But yes, it still has the power to take our breath away, and we spent hours just wandering around on our own, admiring the location and the ingenuity of the people who built it.

You have probably seen a photo like this before.  The difference is, I took this one.