We left a lovely warm Cambridge mid morning on my birthday (7/8/14) and headed to Heathrow where we boarded the 5pm, American Airlines, flight to New York and started our journey to Peru. Our transit through New York was effortless - save for a dearth of immigration officers when we arrived in the almost empty immigration hall. The one on the visitors section was packing up and leaving, the lady who points people to the free desks was looking particularly flummoxed and so sent us to the officer free on the diplomats section - two more followed us and formed a small queue - when he was half way through us - the lady in red announced that the new addition to the queue, a man and his family was a diplomat - the response was well I am off at 8pm - barely 4 minutes away!! Allowed in to the US we made our way to baggage claim and leaving others to their fate! Our luggage collected we put it on the transit belt hoping to see it in Lima; we then made our way to the LAN desks to collect our boarding cards which couldn't be issued in London. Although the only ones in the business class queue we were ignored until I asked what was happening and we were then taken to alternative desk while they continued to chat and give luggage labels to a hoard of crew that had just arrived for a flight. Passes obtained the rest was a breeze - through security, a rest in the AA lounge and then boarding our flight @ 2315 ish. We took off on time and both John and I declined dinner and went to sleep waking for breakfast and an on schedule 6.55am arrival into a cloudy Lima.
True to plan we were welcomed by an Exodus sign with our names on and a driver to take us to the Hotel Faraona in Miraflores - the upscale end of Lima where the seafront apartments go for $400,000 which is considerable given the average wage is $500 per month.
The traffic was heavy with not unexpected driving standards - and lots of minibuses, which reminded me of Nairobi. Most of the buildings looked tired, unfinished, rather ramshackle, grubby and unkempt - there was a massive religious monument reminding us this was a catholic country and perhaps the most unusual and unexpected statue was on the seafront and of John Lennon -clearly the Beatles were Peruvian icons even though they didn't play pan pipes!
We arrived at the hotel around 8 am but couldn't have our room until 3ish so we set off to find the Dunkin Donuts we passed as we came in and had a much needed coffee and doughnut followed by a walk around the streets and down to the park by the beach where we watched the cormorants and vultures soaring.
Lunch was interesting as I tried to order a ham and cheese toastie for John and one without ham for me - they both came without ham but we did get the drinks and fries we ordered and they tasted delicious so who's complaining!
We had a final walk round then headed back to the hotel; they let us have our room at 2.30 PM - after a lovely shower and chocolate from the minibar we got into bed for a nap and awoke at 9pm then went back to sleep finally getting up at 7am on 9/8/14 - loads of sleep - just what we needed!!
(Today's photo is of two very prominent bin ladies we saw marching across one of the squares in Lima.)