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Lima - Beginning The South America Leg
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We flew out of Panama City on the first 'proper' plane we have been on since arriving in Central America (not before Andrea took advantage of the duty free and stocked up on perfume - I've just resigned myself to smelling!). The flight was a decent one, with episodes of 'Friends' in English and some ok food. Once we had touched down in Peru's capital we made straight for a travel agency to book ourselves onto a domestic flight to Tacna, which would save us about four days of travelling through unappealing towns/cities (we are now desperately trying to fit everything in, with only one month left and need to save all the time we can.)
Once all the red-tape was completed, we boarded a shuttle-bus bound for the Miraflores district of the capital and were dropped off at a recommended hostel. Unfortunately, they were fully booked, so we wandered with our packs for a few hundred metres before finding an excellent place called 'Inca's Palace'. We were given a large en-suite corner room, which was light and airy and complete with dining table and chairs. Once we had settled in, we performed the onerous duty of getting our washing done, whilst simultaneously checking out our surroundings.
Miraflores is quite an up-market area in Lima, and we enjoyed a brief stroll through the park where hundreds of local poems were being exhibited as part of World Poetry Day. Obviously, these were all in Spanish, so our appreciation was somewhat limited! What we did find quite strange as we familiarised ourselves with this new environment was that the Peruvians trade in American Dollars and Nuevo Soles with equal measure and use both currencies interchangeably. We expected that more in Central America (in fact Panama uses dollars as its currency - plus small change in Balboas), but we were both surprised to see the influence of the U.S.A reaching across to this continent too.
Knowing we had (yet another) early start the following morning, we retired fairly early and spent an evening reading and watching tv. We had a fairly arduous journey ahead of us as we were making our way into Chile as soon as we could, in order to complete a circuitous route which would take us into Bolivia and back into Peru after a couple of weeks.
We were unable to check-in straight away at the airport as we had in fact arrived too early! The taxi ride in was much quicker than expected, so we made the most of our time and had a surprisingly decent breakfast at an airport cafe. We were then detained at the security checkpoint as I had unwittingly left my pen-knife in my hand luggage and it had shown up in the x-ray machine. The weird thing was, it must have been there for weeks, as the last time I could remember using it was in Roatan to open some beers. It had travelled with me on two flights, including the previous international one from Panama City. The guard asked me if I was carrying a knife, to which I replied that I didn't think so (assuming it was in my main luggage). He searched my bag at least half a dozen times without finding it, before showing me its outline on the x-ray screen. He started to examine bottles and books in case I was concealing it deceitfully, before I pointed out that it looked like it was in the side pocket that he kept missing. Luckily he didn't have me down as a terrorist and subsequently filled in a form for me to sign so that I could collect the pen-knife when we return to Lima in a few weeks.
With that little drama out of the way, we had some time to kill before we boarded and made the hour's flight South to Tacna.
Dan and Andrea
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| 81. | Lima - Beginning The South America Leg - Lima, Peru Mar 22, 2004 |
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