EN ROUTE TO PERU’S SACRED VALLEY

SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 2018

EN ROUTE TO PERU’S SACRED VALLEY

Today we experienced one of the saddest days in my memory. It started happily enough with a reunion at breakfast with our friends from Bombay, Shahnaz and Mukarram Bhagat, who had traveled halfway around the world to take this tour with us. They had flown into Lima from New Jersey where they had been staying with relatives for a week before arriving in Peru three days before us. As a result, they had seen quite a bit of Lima and its environs before we even arrived there. The previous day, they had taken a whole day’s excursion to the south of Peru to what is known as the Nasca Lines—a series of graphics cut into the dessert. They had left our hotel at 3.00 am the previous day and returned home about 2.00 am. Needless to say, they were quite exhausted when we met them at the breakfast lounge for an affectionate reunion. Mukarram did say, however, that the tiring excursion was fully worthwhile.

         Half an hour later, we gathered our belongings together and met in the lobby of the Suites Larco Hotel for our pick-up van which was supposed to arrive at 8.00 am to take us to Lima airport for our flight to the Inca town of Cuzco in the Andes Mountains. Ten minutes later, we hopped into our mini-van and sped off to the airport with the knowledge that the Bhagat Family would follow behind us in their own mini-van. Less than an hour later, we were at Lima International Airport where we met the Bhagat children, Hasan and Azra, who were half asleep on their feet but pulled themselves together for the next leg of our journey. We checked in, got our boarding passes and began our stroll to the security gates after knowing that our flight would be leaving from Gate 12.

         As often happens when one travels with a group, we began to saunter off separately—the young folks (Chriselle, Azra and Hasan) went off to get coffee, Llew and I moved towards the shops and Shahnaz and Mukarram were in another corner of the lounges. At Gate 12, Llew settled down to watch the World Cup Football Game on a gigantic screen and we were informed that a gate change would lead to our flight taking off from Gate 1 where we all expected to reconvene. From that point on, things moved so quickly and so hazily that we are all still trying to make sense of it. Long story short, Mukarram took ill, collapsed in the airport and had immediate medical attention.  It was found that his blood pressure was very high and airline personnel who were tending to him advised him not to fly to Cuzco where altitude and elevation cause very real sickness that he would probably not be able to overcome. Shahnaz, therefore, decided to stay back with him while their children joined us as our flight departure was announced. She assured us that she and Mukarram would meet us, two days later, at Baltra Airport in the Galápagos Islands where we were next headed.

         Sadly, although our flight was delayed by almost two hours, due to crew change issues, it was only when we touched down in Cuzco, about two hours later, that the Bhagat children were told to return to Lima on the next flight. Airline personnel did not have any more information to offer but we guessed it had to do with the sudden illness of their father. We bid them goodbye and watched them leave as we wished them the very best and hoped it would not be long before they could all resume their travels with us.  Our taxi was waiting to transport Blair and the three of us to our hotel—Imagen Plaza Hotel—which we reached about a half hour later. Needless to say, we were all worried and deeply alarmed by the sudden and unexpected turn that our group tour had taken. 

         At the hotel, we checked in to discover that we were on the fourth floor of a building that had no elevator, no heating in the room, no hot water in the sink faucet (in the middle of an Andean winter) and generally a very bleak location far from the beating tourist heart of colonial Cuzco. We were most unhappy. 

         Leaving our things in our room, we decided to go out and meet the city on foot as we had a free afternoon. Blair, who was hungry, decided to go out in search of lunch. He had informed us, from information received through a fellow-passenger, that we needed to purchase tickets to Machu Pichu. Since we had none and since there were, apparently, only a limited number given out each day, we thought it would be best to investigate how we could obtain those tickets. I, therefore, read through my guide book and found out where the tourist office was located as no tickets are sold at the Machu Pichu site. Using our rather sketchy map of Cuzco, we passed the impressive church of Coricancha and arrived at the tourist office and managed to buy tickets for the three of us. Sadly, because we did not have Blair’s passport or his passport number or any way by which to reach him, we could not purchase a ticket for him. Since the next day was a Sunday and the tourist office would be closed, we became very concerned about his lack of a ticket and wondered how we could ensure that he purchased one. Our hotel was simply too far to return to without first eating dinner.

         Walking around the Plaza des Armas, we asked around for a traditional Peruvian restaurant and made our way to an eatery called DonTomas for some local delicacies. There, having finally found WiFi and a way to contact Blair, we sent him an email and gave him instructions on how to obtain a ticket.  

         In DonTomas restaurant, we decided to try the local Cuzco speciality—Cuy—which is grilled guinea pig. For starters, we ordered SoupadeCamerones(Seafood Soup in a coconut milk base) that was absolutely delicious. Our dishes arrived with a variety of sides: cooked giant local corn called maize, salad and sweet potatoes which we washed down with Pisco Sours, red wine and ChichaMoraya, a deep purple fruit juice made from corn that I wished to try. The food was fabulous and we were very pleased with our meal.

         We walked slowly back to our hotel past the very picturesque neighborhood of San Blas with its quaint narrow cobbled streets and its Church of San Blas where a wedding was in progress. In the hotel, we finally had WiFi again and managed to reach out to Shahnaz to find out how Mukarram was doing. We hoped a bit of rest had worked its magic on him.  To our horror, we learned that he had taken a very serious turn for the worse, had suffered an aneurysm following a rupture of a vein in his brain and had fallen into a coma. He was in the ICU on a ventilator in a clinic called Bella Vista close to Lima airport to which he had been rushed by airline personnel almost as soon as our flight had taken off. As we digested the gravity of the news, we assured Shahnaz of our prayers and on a shocked and extremely somber note, we made our way to our rooms.  Every single one of us was speechless and could hardly utter a word as our moods plunged despairingly following the terrible prognosis that the doctors had offered.

         Until manana, adios....