I don´t believe it!

"I don´t believe it" or "Computer says no" or "We really should have caught a bus".....
The plan had always been, one flight in, one flight out. We couldn´t really afford internal flights and the carbon footprint thing was on our mind to. Plus we quite like buses. But... when we arrived in Cuzco we were conscious that we have no longer got loads of time left in South America, and the hotel was aslo a travel agency, and Alex, the travel guy was telling us we could get a great deal to Iquitos, and it wasn´t much more expensive than the bus, and so much quicker... and we were tired, which is never a good time to make a decision, so we handed over wads of cash for flights from Cuzco to Lima, Lima to Iquitos and Iquitos to Lima. Neither of us were that convinced that it was a good idea to pay cash to a middle man, but we had done it, so we both kept out thoughts to ourselves. It took a few requests to get a receipt from them, which heightened our disquiet and the tickets themselves didn´t materialise. So we set off for our Machu Picchu hike (which Colin is blogging) and hoped that the tickets would be at the hostal on our return. They weren´t, but the hostal staff were calm. "These are not the droids you are looking for" - they said (actaully they didn´t they said "Tranquillo, manana vamos a printar") manana we were going, so they better had be printed, we thought. Anywat the next day the tickets from Cuzco to Lima and Lima to Iquitos were printed. Apparently we were to go to the LAN website and print off the Iquitos Lima ones ourselves. Okay. Off we went to Lima. No problem - we´re liking this flying thing. How easy was that! We arrived in Lima in the afternoon, took a taxi from the airport to the rather fabulous Hotel Espana (old Lima mansion complete with sculptures and paintings, and skulls!). We went to bed at 5pm ready to get up to leave at 1.30am for our 3.30am flight. We arrived at the airport and checked in. Or at least we tried to. The tickets hadn´t been paid for. Apparently the credit card used was a dud! Okay.. its 2am. We can´t contact anyone. We took a taxi back to the hotel. The taxi driver was very sweet and as camp as christmas. He insisted on playing Queen I want to breack free at high volume, and wanted us all to sing with him (he was singing "I want to be fwee"). Queen was follwed at similar volume by Gloria Gaynor, "I will survive", Cyndy Lauper "Girls Just Want to Have Fun", and something by Boney M - I don´t remember what because by this time I was semi hysterical in my head!! We aren´t sure whether we have been robbed by the travel agency and now we are in what feels like a 1980s Roller Disco, in a taxi! We got our room back in the hotel, and went back to sleep for a few hours. Colin woke up with a headache from grinding his teeth. We then got on the phone. We got hold of Alex, who quickly but us on to Juana at the hotel in Cuzco (we never spoke to Alex again, he let everyone else deal with it). Poor Juana, I don´t know what she had done to deserve that. She assured us that we would be on the later flight. After much to-ing and fro-ing we were e-mailed tickets. After much hastle with internet cafes, we managed to print them. So we went back to the airport (another taxi ride). We checked in, hooray we thought. We´re sorted. We had deliberately arrived early in case there were problems, so we hung around for a couple of hours, rather feeling that we lived in the airport. 10 minutes before the plane was due to take off, whilst we were at the gate, an announcement was made. "Senor y Senora Feesey, contact the staff at the gate (except in Spanish which I understand but can´t write!). The tickets had not been paid for AGAIN! I ran to the phone and rang Juana at the hotel and explained in Spanglish what had happened (Alex no ha pagado! La trajeta esta mal!). She was really uspet about what had happened too. She asked if we could pay and get the money back from them. No way was that going to happen. I avoided using the word "ladrones" - robbers, but the police did get a mention. Juana said her brother was going to come down to the airport (suddenly she has a bother in Lima, how handy - actually turned out she has a brother, a husband and a son in Lima...) and he will buy our tickets in cash.
Anyway.. obviously we didn´t get on the plane. They told us at the desk they would offload our luggage.....
We went back down to the main concourse. Juana´s husband and son were there, with brother waiting in the car. They were really apologetic to be fair. They bought us a ticket for the 3.30am plane with cash, and it was with some satisfaction that I noted that this ticket cost about 75% of what we had paid them, with another one to go. (Schadenfreude - a great invention). They gave us back the money for the airport tax, and they drove us to and paid for a hotel close to the airport. We asked the airline about our bags. Apparently they had not been offloaded. They were in Iquitos. They would stay in Iquitos to await our arrival. (Hmm, we thought, we´ll see what happens).
We went to bed for another wierd amount of time at a wierd time of day , after a meal at a restaurant close by. Now when I say close, I mean close. We asked at reception if there was somewhere near. Yes he said, this taxi driver will take you there, for free. We got in the taxi, and he drove forward, I kid you not, 150metres!! and let us out. There was actaully a restaurant 75metres from the hotel, he wanted to make sure that we went to the one they had connections with! Anyway it was good and cheap so that was fine.
At 3am we went back to the airport. We asked again about our bags. They confirmed that they were in Iquitos and as we had not requested that they come back to Lima they would stay in Iquitos.
The 3.30am flight was CANCELLED due to bad weather in Iquitos. AAArrrggg!!! They put us on the next one at 7.30am. We took off, we landed in Iquitos. I t was hot and chaotic, pretty much exaclty how you imagine an airport in a big jungle city to be. Our bags, predictably I feel, were not in Iquitos, they had been sent back to Lima! We had a hostel in mind and set off to find a taxi. 5 soles one guy said, not bad we thought. We went with him to the taxi. Does he really think he can get 4 people in the three seats on the back of the motor tricycle...apparently so... oh well sometimes its good having a 13 year old who is still light enough to sit comfortably on your knee... off we sped in the crazy traffic of motorbikes, three wheeled motor trikes and ancient buses held together with string. Iquitos is the worlds largest city that can´t be reached by road. The driver told us, over his shoulder, whilst driving, that he knew a cheap hostal. Okay we said, we like cheap. The hostal was great. Now, our orginal plan had been to meet up with a guide who was reccommended to us by Javier, our guide on the Macchu Picchu trip. Jorge was apparently a man who would be able to give us a genuine local expereince, and as Javier pointed out we had tents and kit so we didn´t need a tour. Unfotunately right now HAD was the operative word. Out kit was in Lima. The airline wre promising our rucksacks would be on the next plane, but our luck wasn´t really in. The hostal we had arrived at did tours. We had a blether with them about it. They looked good and the price was good too. We decided to book a four day three night tour to start the next day. If our ruckscaks arrived it would make our lives easier. If not be would cope with our hand luggage. We went off out into Iquitos to buy long sleeved shirts. Two blocks out from our hostal in the busy street we bumped into Jorge. He immediately identified us as the Scottish family he was expecting. This was really embarassing, we felt awful as we had obviously not had a chance to e-mail him and tell him that we wouldn´t be able to use his services. I tried to explain the story of the plane debacle in Spanish to him (actually my story telling was getting quite good!).
Colin went to the airport to meet our bags off the evening flight, of course they weren´t on the plane. Tomorrow morning we were promised. Why is life so complicated? In addition the cashpoint wouldn´t spit much cash at me, for no apparent reason it had decided I could only have about 100pounds worth, we needed more to pay for the tour, so our itinery for the next morning was get up stupidly early, again!!, get cash, go to airport, get bags (hopefully) pack and leave at about 7.15. Right.... We fell into bed. It was hot. We slept... a bit.
In the morning we got our bags, we got the cash, and we set off for the jungle. We´ll blog the jungle separately becase it was great and this is already really long... and there is more airline battling to come.....
We returned from the jungle after four days, tired, with itchy bites, and having had an amazing experience. We had been promised e-mails about our return flights so we went to the interent cafe.......nothing! Of course not.... We rang Juana. She said she would e-mail us the tickets at 8.30pm. Why 8.30pm? Who knows, she was flustered and wasn´t able to slow down enough to try to understand my Spanish. Also, she couldn´t hear Colin´s e-mail address over the phone, and whenever I tried to say that I would e-mail it to her she heard only "e-mail" and kept saying that she would send us the tickets at 8.30pm. We really wanted to realx. have a beer and get some more sleep, and we still didn´t know what time we were flying the next day!! But at 8.30 we checked our e-mails, and at 9pm. At 9.15 we phoned again. 20 minutes we were told. 9.45 we tried to check our e-mails. The internet cafe had shut! We had to go to the main square in town. I wanted to cry! God we can not wait to never have to deal with these people ever again, we thought. We went to the interent cafe in town. I spoke to Juana on the phone. She was calmer, we were able to understand each other better. She said that she would ring the hostal at 7am with codes for the flights and that we would fly at 10.15am. Okay, we went to bed and slept fitfully. We woke up at 6.45. The poor guy who looked after the hostal told us that Juana had rung at 6.15 with the codes and woken him up! He had written them down for us. Hooray! We went to the airport. with the codes. It took a long time for the woman at the desk to reconcile the codes with our names. Colin and I looked at eaxh other with trepidation, but it was fine. The agency had spelt our surnames wrong so it had been difficult to find us. Now we are in LIma, chilling out and catching up with stuff, and enjoying having our lives back!... off to the seaside in a few days.... by bus!

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