The Salkantay Trail, Peru, January 2023 (Part 4 - Return to Cusco)
Since we were expected to arrive to Cusco a day earlier than anticipated, before we left the hotel in Aguas Calientes the previous morning I went back onto booking.com to book a room for one night back where we started at Casa Cristobal.
When we were finally dropped off at 7:30 AM the morning after we were expecting to arrive, the staff at the hotel were nothing but kind and accommodating, which after what we just went through, is exactly what we needed.
Despite the fact the protests had not reached Cusco (yet), other tourists had already canceled their plans on coming to Peru and the staff at Cristobal told us most of their reservations had been cancelled. Without having to ready the room for the other guests, Joel, the property’s manager that day, gave us the nicest room in the hotel and told us we could stay past the normal check out time of 10 AM so we could have time to properly wash up, enjoy the hotel’s complimentary breakfast, and get some kind of meaningful sleep after spending 13 hours in a cramped van.
Honestly, huge shout out to the staff at Casa Cristobal that day for being so kind and accommodating: Joel, Vanesa, and Santa Rosita. After everything we had just been through, your kindness and thoughtfulness meant more than I have the words to describe.
We managed to wake up shortly before 1 PM to check out from Casa Cristobal to go to the hotel we had originally booked for the next 48 hours. The person at the front desk called us a taxi to take us to the San Blas neighborhood.
Located just on the edge of Cusco’s historic district, the San Blas neighborhood is best known for its picturesque narrow streets and alleys, old Colonial houses, and walls made of Incan stone, but it is also known for being a cultural hub for the arts and food.
Our taxi driver Alfredo drove us to the hotel Melissa had booked for us through AirBNB at the Cities of the World Hotel Cusco. Before he left, I made sure to grab his WhatsApp phone number so I could hire him to take us to the airport the next evening.
There’s an interesting new trend where savvy small-time foreign investors (like our Scandinavian AirBNB host Tim), will buy comparatively cheap property in developing countries, turn them into wannabe boutique hotels, hire a local person like Carmen (the woman managing the property) and pay them a slightly above average local wage to run the place, and charge tourists over $100/night to stay there. It’s a money printing machine.
With rooms named after various cities from around the world such as New York, Beijing, and London, we booked the aptly named Cusco room, a decently sized room with an en suite jacuzzi and some of the most incredible views of Cusco you’ll ever see.
The property manager Carmen was incredibly sweet and helped us get our bags up into the hotel before showing us to our room. With our bags now full of clothes that were drenched in mud, rain, sweat, and tears, we asked if there was anywhere nearby that offered laundry services and as luck would have it, Carmen said she can wash them on premises for S/5 per kilo of clothes. A bargain at twice the price.
Wanting to get some gifts for friends and loved ones back home, we headed out in the direction of the Plaza de Armas to get some nice alpaca-wool blankets, scarves, and table runners.
We stopped at a nice looking shop named Soncco Alpaca on Cuesta de San Blas street. Inside, the store’s manager Juan showed us the seemingly infinite number of color and pattern combinations possible in their textile goods. Melissa bought a few things and Juan was kind enough to let us leave the stuff we bought there so we could walk through the city unincumbered by bags of souvenirs.
Next on our agenda was to go to the offices of our tour company, Salkantay Trekking to try to get some of our money back after we had our trip cut short by a full day due to the protests. We weren’t trying to ask for anything unreasonable, we simply wanted to be paid back the difference between the 5 day trip we paid for and the 4 day trip we ended up getting. Fortunately, after a bit of haggling, Melissa and I each got $200 refunded to us which we felt was fair all things considered.
With our refund in hand (or rather Paypal’d to us), we headed back to our hotel room to get dolled up for dinner at one of Cusco’s hottest restaurants: Limbus Restobar. We found this place while browsing on Google Maps to see what was in the area. After looking at the menu, I was already sold. This is where we had to eat. Additionally, the 11,000 “Excellent” reviews on TripAdvisor and the 4.4 / 5 rating averaged among 5,300 reviews on Google made me feel pretty confident with my pick for the evening.
The lack of tourists once again meant we were not only able to get seated immediately, but we were even able to get a table on the balcony overseeing the city.
Limbus’ menu is spectacular for both its incredible food as well as for its amazing, contemporary cocktails.
To get us started while we looked at the dinner menu, Melissa ordered herself the curiously named Limbus (experimental) cocktail, a sci-fi looking concoction made of Ginebra San Miguel gin, Tanqueray No. 10 gin, dry vermouth, and these cool little herb infused pearls. Oh, and it’s served over dry ice so it’s presented all cool like this:
For dinner, we each started with an appetizer, Melissa got the ceviche. Ceviche found up in the mountains is much different than what one gets on the coast. For starters, being over 12 hours driving distance from the coast, all the fresh, raw fish is going to be fresh water fish from the streams and rivers, in this case it’s trout. Using other local ingredients make this unlike any ceviche either of us have ever seen; sweet potatoes, corn, and cilantro’s heartier cousin culantro made this an interesting, but delicious, dish.
I on the other hand decided to satisfy the inner little fat kid in me that spent years growing up in Ecuador and got the “salchipapa,” an odd, Latin-American favorite, salchi-papa is a portmanteau of the word “salchicha,” meaning sausage or hot dog in this case, and “papa,” meaning potato or fries. Sometimes served with a fried egg on top, you could almost call this a the Latino answer to the Canadian poutine.
For the main course I ordered us the 1 kilogram (2.2 pound) tomahawk steak which was served tableside like this:
