Carrera Las Americas Lima

Well, we finally got to the hotel close to 2am local time....a long day of travel from Toronto. The three of us travelling from Toronto managed to get to Lima at the same time as the 3 from Denver, so that was a nice conincidence.

After a few hours of shut-eye, we grabbed a quick breakfast and decided to head out on foot to explore the city. With an Urban Planner and a Civil ...

... at Court Fields (I miss you, but not the job!!), to the esteemed Mr Woodward who battled so valiantly with me last year and is now no doubt enjoying the new year 7s!! Hello to Dad and Mark and Malcolm (thanks for keeping Dad up to date) and Dad.......we survived South America without getting arrested or murdered!! Hi to Gav and thanks to everyone who is reading this. Its good to know you are all there!!

More soon from NZ!!!

... with big ceilings and an interactive screen on the back of every seat where you could pick from a ton of movies, TV shows, games, and radio stations. I played and fast forwarded as much as I liked and could pause it to go to the bathroom. What an uncommon and unsung luxury. I watched Manchurian Candidate, a spellbinding but entirely too gorey movie for an early morning flight. I also watched a documentary on savants but that was cut short by our landing ...

... of the city.  I got a chance to see little old ladies, business people in suits, teenagers, moms with kids, nurses in their scrubs, helpful old men, and well-dressed 20 somethings all ride the bus.  It really wasn't that shady.
If you had room left on your bus, peddlers would sometimes get on at one stop and then get off at the next.  In between, they tried to sell you gum, candy, or other snacks.  Room is a relative term.  We rode one bus where every seat was filled ...

... noon and headed to the airport. Strike or not, airplanes were still flying, so we made it to Lima by 4:30 PM. Originally we had planned a quick day tour of Lima so I could show Ben the highlights of the largest city in Peru, where I had spent over a year of my life as a resident in the early seventies. But due to a flight cancellation, we were left with an abbreviated half day to make the most of the city as best we could. We were met by a guide and headed for ...

... office all over the place! This makes it terribly difficult to book bus tickets because not only can you not compare prices- you have to be CERTAIN that the bus company you choose goes to the destination you want! I heard from other backpackers that they sometimes had to go across town a couple of times to find the correct company! What a pain in the "you know what!" Getting across town can take 30 ...

... in Newark on schedule. As the plane was pulling into the gate, we checked the second pair of boarding passes that we had already been given in Lima to see where we would be boarding the plane for Heathrow. It was then that we realised that we were going to be caught up in the most ludicrous airport-transfer-dance we had ever had to do. Our plane from Lima had arrived at gate C125. We would be flying out again from gate C125. Exceptionally convenient... if we weren't ...

... samples and bought a bottle of the good stuff. We took a taxi from Pueblo Libre to the movie theater in Miraflores to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button which turned out to be longer than we expected. We were tired by the time it ended so we opted not to join the rest of the HVO group for dinner. We were unable to reach Rick's cell phone to explain our absence so it was with a guilty conscience that we trudged back home and went to sleep.

... onto the shore. Finally made it to the hostel where I parked my backpack in the dorm room where I was to stay for the next few days. I went to bed early that night in a dorm room with the only other roommate being a large teddy bear tucked under the duvet in a nearby bed.

Lima is a large city with over 8 million people living there. It was foggy and cloudy – apparently the fog hangs over the city for most of the year. With the weather ...