Ditching Our Taxi in Cusco, April 10th

We arrived at the InkaExpress terminal at about 5pm after our day-long tour. There was a man from the Casa Elena hotel where we had a reservation waiting passengers from the bus. He was holding a sign that didn’t have my name on it though. He said he didn’t have any information for us, so we would need to take a taxi. Easy enough… We negotiated a rate with a taxi driver right there and hopped into his car.

About half way to the Casa Elena hotel, our taxi driver, who I had been chatting up in Spanish, stopped his car on the side of the road. He said he  needed to buy a ticket to Machu Picchu, so he got out and disappeared behind a large metal door next to a closed travel agency. This was super weird.

I waited for a minute, feeling pretty vulnerable. “This is where we look for sharp objects,” I said only half joking to Mary and Lisa who were also dumbfounded in the backseat.

I decided to get out of the car myself to see what was going on. We were in an outer area of Cusco where I had never been. I poked my head into the metal door. There was a man there in a courtyard who wasn’t our driver. There was also a van parked behind us with a man in the driver’s seat… At that point I wasn’t going to wait around for my demise, or at the very least, for this completely inconsiderate taxi driver to come back to his car.

“Let’s go!” I said to Mary and Lisa, grabbing my bag out of the front seat and hailing a different cab that was coming down the street. Everyone piled out of the first taxi, grabbed our stuff from the trunk, and then piled in to the second taxi in a rush.

I wish I could have waited around to see the look on our first taxi driver’s face. I have had taxi drivers stop mid-route to get gas… fair enough. It usually only takes 30 seconds, and the driver never leaves the car. But stopping the car, getting out and leaving us was freaky.

A Preview of the “Allison Smack Down En Español”

Once we arrived safely at the Casa Elena hotel in Cusco, we were told that we didn’t have a reservation. Although I had emailed the hotel several times to make and confirm changes to our reservation, Casa Elena said that because they didn’t know what time we were arriving they weren’t able to confirm our hotel. (Note: They could have emailed, or called, as they had all of my contact information.)

So, they didn’t have a room for us. And after the taxi incident, I was pretty annoyed and started throwing my Spanish around. (Especially after they suggested staying at another hotel down the street and then moving the next day to come back to their hotel. Their losing our reservation was inconvenient enough.) Mary and Lisa got a preview of the “Allison Smack Down En Español” that was going to happen the next at Machu Picchu. More on that tomorrow!

Casa Elena did help us get settled into a nearby hotel. Our room was in the dark basement, which wasn’t helped by one of the three lights being broken. BUT, the beds were comfortable, the included breakfast had eggs, and it was cheaper than Casa Elena.