Hello from Cusco

The wife and I at Machu Picchu

To get things started let me tell you all a little about myself and how I came to live in Cusco. My name is Lyle Walker and I am an American who originally grew up in a small town in Southern California, I relocated to Las Vegas in 1989 after marrying my first wife and spent the following 23 years working as an Engineer for several Major industrial laundry’s that service the hotel industry, with my most recent position being that of Chief Engineer for Boyd Gaming’s Laundry in Henderson.

I met my beautiful Peruvian wife Liliana (Lily) in 2005 and we were married in 2006. Lily loves to travel and had spent much of her life traveling the globe. I on the other hand had never left the US and had only been to a few states, half of which were visited while I was serving in the military and I don’t think that really counts as travel. Consequently after meeting Lily, I was introduced to world travel and have loved every adventure we have taken.

My first trip to Peru was back in 2006, on this trip we visited Cusco and several of the surrounding sights including Machu Picchu, we also spent almost a week in Lily’s parent’s home town of San Ramon. This is when I fell in love with Peru, while Lima is not my favorite city, as it is a major metropolitan city and essentially the Peruvian equivalent of say Los Angeles. Growing up in a small town I really enjoyed my time in San Ramon, I love the small town vibe with its friendly people and slow pace, a small town may not have all of the conveniences of a big city, but you don’t have all the stress, noise, congestion and pollution of a big city either.

Several years after getting married we started making plans to retire early and decided to find a place abroad to open a bed and breakfast, as we both like Italy we started our search there. While Italy is a beautiful country with lots of small towns and a good tourist industry, the costs and logistics involved for a non-European to move there with the intention of running a business and living made it impractical. After determining that Italy was not going to work for us we turned our attention to Peru, Lily being a citizen make the immigration process much easier and the cost of living is good, these facts along with a growing tourist industry are what steered us to Cusco.

Now that a location had been chosen all that was left was to find a property to purchase, so in January of 2012 we made a trip back to Cusco with the intention of purchasing a property to use as a bed and breakfast. We spent almost a week looking at different properties in and around Cusco, not really wanting to deal with the big city vibe; we chose a property in a small town just outside of Cusco called Huarocondo. We moved here in August and officially opened our Bed and breakfast, now known as GringWasi, in September. I am really enjoying life here and find this small town a welcome and relaxing change from my 23 years in Vegas.

Through this Blog I plan on posting what is happening here at GringoWasi, my observations and travels here in the Cusco region, as well as tips from myself and our guests for travelers planning on visiting the Cusco region. I hope that readers will find what I have to offer to be interesting and informative. Thanks for visiting and may all your travels be fulfilling.