This is being written Tuesday evening, May 28, covering the last 2 days.

Monday morning, the day after Machu Picchu, I was up about 4:30am. We’d been out the day before from 8:30am to 9pm so I didn’t even try to work on the blog when we got in. It was a shower and then bed, but I slept a fairly reasonable 7 hours. The internet was functioning much better that morning than it had on Saturday night, but I still went to the dining room when it opened at 5:30am because I was dying for coffee and didn’t want to wake Ash making it in the room. Those espresso makers are Loud! Plus, I knew I’d be early enough to snag the table by the fire I had the morning before.

We had an added feature at breakfast that morning: a native playing music, seen above with a harp. He always played a flute. It set a nice mood for the day, very relaxing.

As we were leaving, there was security everywhere because APEC was coming: the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation, 21 countries that border the Pacific, including the US. Kinda cool, eh?

We were “bags out at 9” and on the road by 10. We made this little stop just for the view. And the photo opportunity happening on our right.

To our left, a bike zip lining opportunity. See that bicycle pretty much dead center seemingly floating in mid-air? No, thank you.

We did let them convince us to do the photo op we were going to pass on. Was it worth it?

The big stop of the day was here: The Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco. Remember, this is a National Geographic tour, so we’ve learned to expect an educational opportunity or two. This was one of those. This is an organization they helped create, a consortium of Andean weavers coming together to continue developing skills that have been passed down for literally thousands of years.

We sat around their lovely courtyard, and were kicked off with Rocio there on the left, who was the guide leader for the past few days, next to the woman (whose name I already forgot, sorry) who was the director of the program.

They showed us how they spin yarn.

And this lengthy but interesting portion on the different plants they use to get different colors of dyes from. She’d pick up a basket and talk about the plant, show which color dye it produced, then go to the next one.

The first of several weaving demonstrations, each one getting more complex.

Some of you have seen this before because we got immediate feedback from folks on Facebook on which hat to buy for Ash. His head is always cold and this was the clear winner.

They brought out a couple of alpacas which is their primary source of yarn.

Then we had a lovely lunch next door, prepared with typical Andean food.

And a big surprise: flowers for us in honor of our handfasting anniversary – the relationship tradition we practice where we commit to each other for just “a year and a day”, at which time we can go our separate ways without any hard feelings, or we recommit for another year and a day. We’ve woven traveling and new rings into our tradition – hence the new rings and got in Lima. The flowers were presented by Rocio and the director and we were so grateful. Gay marriage is not yet legal in Peru and we’ve seen very few gay flags since we’ve been here (none in Lima, just a few in Cusco) so it’s been hard to tell how accepting folks are, especially when they keep putting us in rooms with separate beds. So, this was much appreciated.

The lunch started with a delicious soup of many different kinds of vegetables, couldn’t begin to name them all. It was wonderful.

And: guinea pig. This is one of their main sources of protein and were so proud to serve it to us. Our direct guide, Caterina, grew up in Cusco, and she said her and the other guides sat in the back and chowed down because they didn’t want to gross us out how much they were enjoying these little things.

They just kept bringing stuff out. Starting from center than to Noon and clockwise: quinoa; salad; potato with a spicy green sauce; a vegetable mix that I think was broccoli, onion, garlic and other stuff I forgot; a protein source that I didn’t understand what it was but was mushy and my least favorite thing on the plate; yes, I tried the guinea pig; fried chicken tenders; fava bean; corn; a potato pancake. Whew! The pig was good, a little gamey, crispy skin, very greasy. I don’t need to try it again.

From there it was another hour back to Cusco where we would stay one night here, at the Palacio Del Inca. Yes, it was actually a palace back in the day.

We had a small but nice room…

…and they brought us a cake for our anniversary. Except now I’m Mrs. Gupta. (See what I mean?) A lovely thought though since Ash told them it was our anniversary, this is a Marriot property and he’s a Platinum member.

Ash was not feeling good at all – combination cold he picked up the last night in Lima, altitude sickness (Cusco is at 11.2k feet), and car sickness (LOTS of windy roads the last few days) so we just stayed in the hotel the rest of the day. I managed to get a massage which was decent and appreciated, especially as my legs were pretty sore from the walk down from Machu Picchu the day before.

We went to the hotel restaurant for dinner. I didn’t include photos of food because we didn’t do anything all that original – I passed on the alpaca after much thought and had beef instead. (I kept thinking of those cute things we saw at the weaving place!) But the bread was amazing – they brought another basket after we finished this one – and I like this photo of Ash.

We did our now annual handfasting conversation: Continue yes or no? In this case, both yes. So then: what was our favorite part of the last year? Do we have any requests of each other for the next one? I enjoyed this conversation more than last year’s.

We had dessert in the room of course. That cake was delicious, too bad we didn’t eat much of it.

This is what we bought from the weavers: the hat for Ash, and a table runner for our dining room.

On Tuesday, we were “bags out at 4:15am.” Ouch. Ours were out by 4:05 and we went down to breakfast – which the hotel started early just for our group – at 4:30am. We left the hotel about 5:15 for a 7:35am flight back to Lima.

It was just about an hour flight and then we had almost 4 hours to kill before the next one. Luckily, they had a nice lounge we had access to with Priority Pass. This is Ash in the entrance and the space downstairs, but we went upstairs.

And found a bunch of our people already there. We know 8 of the folks in this photo, plus another 4 to the right and around the corner.

We were headed to Guayaquil, Ecuador. Despite this view in the map, it’s 60km from the ocean but sits on a delta and is the major port of the country. Those islands on the left in the red circle? The Galapagos, where we head tomorrow, 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador.

I was a little shocked at how American the airport is. Just in this photo: McDonald’s, Cinnabon, Krispy Kreme. Although, since their currency is also the US Dollar, I guess it makes sense.

It was about a 20 minute drive to the hotel. It’s a nice room, double beds again….and gay marriage is legal in Ecuador!

A HUGE bathroom…

…with a shower you could fit 12 people in.

They left us ingredients and instructions to make Limonada Imperial, including ice already being in that bucket.

This is the courtyard outside our room….

…and the main entrance, a shot we took on a little walk after we got settled.

The hotel is in a huge park and we caught some monkeys just across the way. There were about 6 of them here at the time. We were jealous at dinner to hear that fellow travelers saw sloths and other stuff when they did a full walk of the park. We are hoping to have time to explore when we are back here on Sunday.

We had come out here hoping to walk that pier on the right but it was closed. “Prohibido.” If you think you see airplanes in the distance you’d be right. That’s the airport there across the river.

We had dinner with the group at Cafe Julian just over in the next building at 6pm.

We’d made our dinner selections from a prefixed menu on the bus from the airport. Both of us had the shrimp ceviche, in a rich cold tomato soup that was fresh and amazing.

Ash had Ecuadorian sea bass which was really, really good.

I had braised short ribs, also good, and so tender you didn’t need a knife (except to trim the fat off). With a spicy risotto and asparagus.

Ash had fruit for dessert. I had a panna cotta with a bit of chocolate ice cream, blueberries, raspberry sauce.

We came back to the room to get sorted for tomorrow. Since we are coming back here on Sunday, and we won’t need some of the heavier stuff we packed for Cusco, we are leaving one of our larger bags here and consolidated what we take on the boat. We are “bags out at 6am” so an early start again tomorrow. I have no idea what kind of connection we will have between now and Sunday – maybe none! – so we will see how it goes. If you don’t hear from me until then, that’s why. I’ll find a way to catch up when we get on the grid again like we did in Africa last year.

See you soon either way!