Countdown Begins...9 days!

We officially have 9 days until we leave for Peru. We are both full of mixes emotions. Excitement sparkled with a little stress turning into another wave of blissful anticipation.

We are having a hard time deciding on what gifts to bring for the fam. It is hard enough when your family is from the same culture. We want get gifts that they cannot find there or things that are too expensive to buy there. We bought a Wii for Eduardo's brother Fernando (we are doing a trade for plane tickets to Cusco). Here the Wii costs $200 USD but in Peru costs $350 USD.

It is frustrating to be a consumer in Peru. The items that you want are doubled or even tripled the normal price for imported manufactured items. Things that are hand-made are much cheaper than here. The cultures are almost opposite in this way. The hand-made items in the US are way more expensive than the manufactured items. Peru does not have a lot of factories or the infrastructure to support this industry.

So far we have our tickets from Portland OR to Lima Peru & back as well as plane tickets to Cusco Peru and back. We still need to set up our hotel reservations in Cusco and Aguascalientes (Machu Picchu) and the train tickets from Cusco to Aguascalients.

I will write another post in the future about the treatment of the Peruvians by the tourist industry in a future post, but today I want to share the difference in the pricing on our flights to Cusco and our experience in the finding of them.

Originally Eduardo's brother said he would buy the plane tickets from Lima to Cusco to help us out. He purchased Eduardo's ticket for $40 USD, with a Peruvian ID you fly for less money (Eduardo still has a Peruvian ID and Passport). If you do not have a Peruvian ID you pay a tourist price. My flight cost something like $280 USD. Fernando had a hard time buying my ticket with his credit card at first, so I said I would just buy it myself. I called the airline, LAN and gave my time and date to match Eduardo's flight and expected to pay the $280 USD for a round trip ticket. I was told was that it would cost over $500 USD!! I could not believe it. I said "this is a mistake..." The LAN operator explained to me that if you are buying your ticket from the US with a US credit card that is the price...
What a difference! In the end we had Fernando's girlfriend, Aliena, buy it for $280!

Whew! What a run around!

Anyway, we are getting our bags ready with Christmas gifts and all the goodies that we will need and want.

The last bits that are on the list are batteries for the Super 8 video camera (we will take footage of Machu Piccu and transform it into digital!) and shoes for Eduardo's mom.