Bye bye Peru 🇵🇪🦙

Hello everyone, as last week was very eventful and exciting, I haven’t had the chance to properly finish my travel blog until now, where I’ve been back in Germany for almost three weeks.
I will also write a final post summarizing the most beautiful moments, but for now, let's focus on the last week in Peru.
After my food poisoning at Machu Picchu, I finally felt better on Monday and returned to the project. The birds were really cool, and we often roamed around the city and market in the afternoons. As the last big highlight of the week, we hiked to Rainbow Mountain on Thursday, which is almost 5200 m high.
We booked that ourselves through a tour organization in Cusco, and we set off at 4:30 in the morning. First, we had breakfast at a very local place and then continued our journey towards the mountain. Unfortunately, halfway on our way, the bus broke down; it had a mechanical failure, and all the passengers had to get off.

We then waited for almost three and a half hours in the blazing sun for a replacement bus; the organization was really poorly prepared, and the mood was down.

In the morning, the weather was perfect, with clear sunshine and pleasant temperatures. But when we finally reached the mountain in the afternoon, it suddenly started raining, then hailing, and even snowing.

It got so cold that many from our group turned back, and our guide recommended us to go further up.

But we decided to go for it anyway because it was our last real day in Cusco, and we didn’t want to miss out on that.

I actually made it to the top of the mountain; the last 200 m were super exhausting.

That was the highest I had ever been in my life and on this trip.

Afterwards, we had a delicious lunch and we all went home totally exhausted.

On Friday, it was my departure day, and that’s when the flight chaos started.

My flight was at 21:30 in the evening, so I left my host family at six to be on time at the airport. Unfortunately, my flight was delayed and then cancelled.

This dragged on until about 1:00 AM, and from that moment on, I knew I wouldn’t be able to catch my connecting flights to Europe. This stressed me out a lot since it was just before Christmas, and I didn’t know how I would get home.

I called Mom and Dad in the middle of the night and we discussed how to proceed.

I then returned to my host family to at least get about 2 hours of sleep and then be back at the airport at 4:00 AM to catch my rescheduled flights to Ecuador. Those were three flights where I was super tired and a bit frazzled. In Quito, I stayed with my host mom Monica again, who kindly took me in for one more night.

That felt really good, I slept for 12 hours, took a shower, and zoomed back to the airport the next day. In the meantime, Mom and Dad had booked me a very nice return flight from Quito to Amsterdam.

From then on, everything went perfectly; after about 18 hours of travel, I was back in Frankfurt. I was welcomed so nicely; Emma had made a sign, and Tina, Philipp, Mom, Dad, and Emma picked me up from the airport :)

So here I am again, back in Europe, back in Germany. The first few days felt really strange, adjusting back to our normal life felt decadent. But the first hot shower was incredibly wonderful, and the warm floor at home is true luxury.

In my next post, I would like to revisit my experiences in detail. Thank you already for your support and for regularly reading 💓

Thank you to everyone who accompanied, supported, and followed my trip. 

It truly was the trip of my life ❤️

With much gratitude in my heart, I say goodbye until the next and final post!

Your Paula