Another girl, another planet

Trip Start Sep 13, 2004
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Trip End May 06, 2005


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Flag of Peru  ,
Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Just 18 hours since the taxi driver arrived and here I am, ensconced in 3 star style in my hotel in the Miraflores area of Lima. What is more I arrived by taxi, so for the first time in my life there was a man at the airport waving a sign with my name on it. For those who know my travel style, this is only a temporary aberration, soon to be replaced with rickety old buses and youth hostels with unidentifiable creepy crawlies in the cold water only showers.

It´s a bit like the comparison of the BA leg of the flight from London to Madrid with the Iberia leg from Madrid to Lima. That is perhaps a little harsh, but there is a difference in their attitudes to service and the quality of the food. At least Iberia pulled out all the stops when it came to in-flight entertainment. We had the Charlotte Church blockbuster (the name of which temporarily escapes me), from whence the title of this entry - they had a band in it playing ¨Another Girl, Another Planet", which then ran through my mind for the rest of the flight Leaving a rainy Heathrow
Leaving a rainy Heathrow
 . Not a bad thing, except that I could only remember about 4 lines and still cannot recall who sang it. This was followed by a movie about a guy who invented a spray to vapourise doggy do, which he called VaPOOrise, geddit? I stretched out over the back row and caught up on some lost sleep.

I had my first random invitation from a guy I had been sitting next to on the plane earlier on. He was flying out to join his Peruvian wife and her family for Jewish new year, and if I was passing through Iquitos I was welcome. A generous and momentarily inviting offer, but a little perusal of my guidebook came up with the following: ¨...holds the title of the largest city in the world without road links...¨. So my choices were fly from Lima or slowboat up the Amazon from who knows where. Now I´m sure that would blow the budget and I also need to be in Quito in 10 days time or so for my Spanish course, so I´ll stick with the original plan for now.
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