8m
Once again we had an extremely early morning wake up to change to our 4th country of the tour. The hotel staff said goodbye and handed us our little breakfast box which contained a bottle of orange juice, dried fruit, trail mix, potato crisps and a ham and cheese sandwich. Not too shabby. We arrived at Cusco airport and managed to book our bags through to Guayaquil in Ecuador and then boarded the small little plane from Cusco. Looking at the departure board, there were 5 different flights out of Cusco to Lima that morning.
The flight was only 90 minutes and we soon arrived at Lima. No signs were around about where to go for international departures, and when I asked received some non-committal response pointing in a rough direction to the right. TISA. We followed the instructions, much as they were, and did find the correct entry. When we were in line for the security check, the guy in front was carrying a large pizza box and quite happily eating.
As I went through the metal detector I ‘beeped’ and was told to remove my watch. I did, retried, and beeped again. ‘Shoes’ this time. ‘But they contain no metal. ‘Shoes’ came the repeat and so I did remove them. Went through and beeped again. No idea what set it off but this time the security agent had had enough so I had to be patted down. We caught up with the pizza in the immigration line and I have no idea how it had fared through the security process.
The flight to Guayaquil wax a bit bumpy but again short and then we met Ecuadorian immigration. I was at the front and after asking; how long I was staying for, where I was going, the reason for the visit and my marital status, let me through. Not so for Fran and Charlie. The problem was that both of them had visited Ecuador on the way to the Galapagos on their British passport and now we’re using their Australian one and the system didn’t like the multiple passports. Charlie flashed his new British version and immigration let him through, however Fran did not have hers. Eventually sorted we headed downstairs to collect our bags and then to outside where we were met by someone holding a placard with “Julian Ross x 3”.
The hotel is nice, on the bank of the river Guayas and after a walk along the foreshore, returned for a coffee. Dinner was entertaining when the power went off, again!