We flew from Denver to Lima, Peru with a stopover in Atlanta. We spent four nights in Lima, two before visiting the Amazon rain forest, then two more on our way to Cusco and the Inca ruins. We arrived in Lima at about midnight and joined four other people who had decided to do the pre-trip extension to the Amazon rain forest. It was well past midnight when we finally got to our hotel, but the sidewalks were still full of people.
The stayed at the Antigua hotel, small but very comfortable and located in the beautiful Miraflores district of Lima. Here we are looking over the bluffs a short walk from our hotel.
Later we joined the other four pre-trip friends and had a short tour of the neighborhood with a local guide.
Four nights in the Amazon rain forest, then back in Lima to join the larger tour group of 15 for the main tour of Machu Picchu and the Galapagos. This time we went by bus to an Inca museum and to the historic colonial buildings.
The royal Incas were not content to have common head shapes. Royal infants had their heads bound tightly to create flat or distorted skulls.
These were not the only skulls that we saw. We took a tour through the catacombs of a fifteenth-century church and saw thousands of neatly stacked piles of bones.
Next: Amazon rain forest