Woke up to a
“wake-up” call at 6 am, saying the driver was here for us. I had
asked for an earlier wake up call, but it either didn't happen, or we
went back to bed and forgot all about it. We quickly got ready and
got a ride to the airport. The ride was beautiful, seeing Iquitos at
dawn, it is so poor and dirty, but beautiful as well. Pretty sure the
two turkey vultures I saw saw near one of the many curbside trash
piles were enjoying a dog meal. As plenty of the strays are
consistently near their end. We checked into the airport after
waiting seemingly forever for a group of 18 missionaries to check in
all at once. This wouldn't be the last time they'd annoy. Once on the
plane, we were seated behind a crying baby, and basically in the
middle of the missionary group. Slightly hungover, the flying mixed
with a loud snorer who fell asleep pre-takeoff and woke when we
landed, audible headphone music that sucked, tapping, whistling and
rude behavior were enough to call this my worst flight experience
ever. My water bottle in my backpack had gotten pressurized and
leaked a little bit from the overhead bin onto a lady a couple of
rows up, so count me as rude as well. I also apologized profusely and
she seemed to accept, I totally forgot there was still a little water
in that bottle.
The Iquitos
airport has only 4 gates, tarmac entry, and you have to wait for the
plane before you to land and leave, so our plane was a little
delayed, but our driver was in Lima ready for us. They misspelled my
name on the sign again, a different way this time, which is always
funny, and we took a different way to the hotel than we did the first
time. Lots of signs painted on concrete walls, I saw a lot of
political signs saying things about the president and the government,
evidently put there by the government. Once at the hotel, I realized
some of my travel documents had been in the stolen bag, so I emailed
the embassy to report it and emailed the pharmacy to try and get
records of my inoculations emailed over to me. We'll see...
We waited for our
room to be ready and showered and set out for some errands in Lima.
We found an amazing little mall in the cliffs by the ocean and ate at
a nice restaurant. I had paella and some Yuquen balls and Mark had
lasagna. Muy rico! Don't know if I mentioned it, but a few weird
things here are: throwing away toilet paper instead of flushing it,
not being able to drink tap water, very slick/polished sidewalks(not
great for flip-flops in the rain as Mark found out), and people walk
as crazy as they drive. There's no real system, everyone just cuts in
and out where they can and if someone is playing chicken with you,
you usually lose or you collide with them.
We walked back up
to the shopping area of Miraflores after lunch and I looked for a
SLR. This experience pushed my Spanish speaking limits and was
slightly frustrating, as she showed me each camera, one by one
locking the door after each one. She didn't know the cameras that
well, and our language struggles made it worse. Sadly, I decided to
basically replace my PAS and use that for the rest of the trip. The
SLRs that were worth buying were too expensive and the ones I could
afford were no netter than the PASs they had. I would have to sell it
when I got home if I got an SLR, so I just bought a really good PAS
that I would want to keep and hoped it would do the trick at Macchu
Picchu. It turned out to be the right choice. It might have been a
different story if I had one credit card with a few thousand
available on it, but I had three different ones with about $1000
each. We went through the frustrating checkout process, hopping from
station to station, and she had not given me the real price, the
price listed was the “discount” price like if you had a mart card
for the store. So the camera was s/200 more than expected. About $70.
It ended up working out though, because for some reason the memory
cards were cheaper than listed, but between bouncing around, trying
to ask en espanol about megapixels, optical zoom, warranty, changing
the menu language, seeing if the charger would work in the U.S., and
seemingly having a bout a traveler's diarrhea on the way...it was a
frustrating time. It's not what I had planned on having at Macchu
Picchu, but I think it will be ok.
We hit a small
craft store, I bought hats and magnets for the family, stopped and
got some toiletries, and we walked back home.
Earlier, the sky
was blue for the first time in Lima for us, and it was beautiful. So
much better than grey with little visibility. And there were
paragliders taking off in droves from the cliffs by the ocean. S/150
for a 10 minute ride, about $50. I thought about it, but wasn't sure
how much I'd spend on a camera at that point, so decided against it.
On the walk back, it became dark, but the place was still happy.
Everyone seems to come outside here. Young, old and middle aged all
mix in the same location. Lots of hanging out in then park, surfing,
skateboarding, bikes, rollerblades, lovers, walkers, sitters, and
everything under the sun. We strolled back, I was so tired, I laid
down at 8ish after setting up my camera and slept until about 11. I
had 2 days to write about and I am finishing now, about 1 am.
Tomorrow, we wait for laundry to be done and figure out how we're
getting around for the next few days. We'll visit the airline office,
train station and bus station and will either go to Pisco or get
ready to head out very early the following day. Buenos noches!
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