First morning in Petu

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It took about 15 hours yesterday, but we made it to the hotel here in Miraflores (a suburb of Lima) about 11:30 last night after a relatively smooth trip. Good weather and no delays actually caused us to arrive a little early. Sadly, it's not always that way!

Mary is at the dentist office right now while I'm sitting a sidewalk table at Starbucks waiting for everything to open so I can do my errands. Technology is a wonderful thing. I can make this entry on my iPad and later make phone calls here and back to the US also with my iPad for almost no cost. Fortunately wifi is as common here as back home.

We have tickets for a 16-hour bus trip to Cajamarca in the north, but I'm hoping to find cheap tickets for a flight tonight or tomorrow. The cost to buy from the US was almost $800, but I think it will be more like $200-300 here -- defiitely worth it for the return flight. I also have stop by the South American Explorers clubhouse and drop off a suitcase with things we are not taking into the mountains.

It's surprisingly gray and depressing this morning. The weather is usually sunny and nice since it's now summer here. The atmosphere here seems much slower than usual -- probably because it's not really tourist season and things are more normal.

The plans for this trip are definitely uncertain afterne first week. A few days in the remote village of San Vicente 3 hours down a dirt mountain road away from the nearest town and then we'll come back to Lima. Mary wants to do some shopping here and spend time with her sister, Lena. I may catch a flight to Iquitos and spend a few days beside the Amazon River. No trips down the river this time, though. Still have a few days to finalize those plans, though.

I try to make another entry later today before we get on the bus, but,mto be honest, there's not much to say. I've been here so many times that Lima is nothing special any more. It's just a place to spend a night. I don't even think about how I'm 4000 miles from home on another continent. Truthfully, I think of Peru as my second home now and am almost as comfortable here as in the US.

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