Lesson 12
Practice trust and gratitude.
We landed in Cusco, our first stop in Peru, just as the sun was setting. Our accomodations that night were still a two-hour drive away, in the small town of Ollantaytambo. We did not have any transportation booked. We had read in travel groups on Facebook and Reddit that it is fairly easy to get an Uber for the journey from Cusco to Ollantaytambo (and less expensive than a pre-booked taxi service), so we arrived at Cusco airport hoping for the best. We had also read that many Uber drivers at the airport try to get you to switch to a cash payment instead of using the Uber platform, because Uber keeps a portion of every fare. While we didn’t encounter this particular issue, we did encounter a driver who asked us up front for a 30 soles cash tip. He told us that it was late, that it was a two-hour drive, and that he lived in Cusco, which meant that he would have to drive all the way back to the city, and with no passengers. I could sympathize with him to a certain extent. He was right that it was getting late. And it certainly was a long drive. The Uber app was only charging us less than $50 for the ride, which pales in comparison to what a two-hour Uber ride would cost in the US. (For example, an hour-and-a-half ride from Logan Airport in Boston to where I used to live on Cape Cod would cost me about $150.) And, from our US perspective at least, he really wasn't asking for all that much money: 30 soles is about $8. However, we have traveled far and long enough now that we are not unfamiliar with taxi scams, and asking for a very specific cash “tip” as a condition for driving us somewhere sounded just like a scam to us. We politely declined his services and told him we would find another driver. After firmly saying “no thank you” another three times, our driver had a change of heart and agreed to take us without a "tip.”
This is where the fun really began. The trip from Cusco to Ollantaytambo is only about 40 miles, but they are probably 40 of the most "adventurous” miles I’ve ever traveled in a car. They are 40 miles of roads winding up, down, and around the Andes mountains. Sometimes the road was paved, sometimes it was packed dirt, and sometimes it was a muddy clay. No matter what the surface type, however, there were potholes. Always potholes. And speed bumps. Lots of speed bumps. Speed bumps that suddenly rose up out of the darkness -- even when it looked like we were in the middle of nowhere. On a couple of occasions, the road turned into a maze of narrow one-way streets through towns, with street dogs wandering dangerously close to the traffic and women selling bread from road-side stalls, waving yellow plastic bags on sticks to try to attract the attention of passing motorists. And then there were the rainy season landslides, when we were forced to drive perilously close to the edge of a mountain in order to maneuver around massive mounds of mud and rock blocking much of the road. I felt like I was living in some sort of virtual reality game, where the object was to navigate the craziest roads imaginable and arrive at your destination alive. It’s a good thing I hadn’t had much of a dinner that night, because between the high elevation and the stomach-churning roads, it wouldn’t have been pretty.
It was precisely during this ride that I realized just how much travel forces you to trust fellow human beings, strangers whom you have never met before. People like Fredy, our Uber driver that night. Here we were, in the dark, just landed in a new country, not really knowing where we were, not really speaking the language. We were pretty powerless, pretty helpless. And here was Fredy, whom we had just met, taking good care of us. Despite the sketchy start, he turned out to be a good guy. He spoke a little English, we spoke a little Spanish, and we made conversation during the trip work. He successfully navigated all of the many obstacles in our path and got us to our destination safe and sound. And, in the end, we gave him a bigger tip than the one he had initially asked for. Because we were truly grateful. Grateful for his local knowledge and expertise. Grateful for his help and welcoming conversation. Grateful to have made a new connection in a brand new place. Grateful that the universe had sent us Fredy, precisely when we needed him.
Written on March 31, 2026 in Cusco, Peru
Glad you arrived safely!