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Published: June 29th 2008
Well, I almost could have been writing this from a penthouse suite in the flashest hotel in Lima... When I went to collect the USD I had pre-paid for, from Leeds airport yesterday morning, the poor girl on the desk hadn´t quite woken up. She took a look at my receipt and after counting out a pile of cash told me there weren´t enough dollars at the desk and she´d need to just fetch a few more from the safe. Strange, I thought, I have only bought $575. As she returned and began counting several piles of hundreds I realised she was about to give me $5750. Kerching! I pretended to be distracted so I couldn´t be considered complicit in robbing Travelex until half way through the second count of the cash she glanced back at the receipt.... and promptly put the piles of cash back into her drawer. Oh well, it´s more of an adventure on a shoestring!
So I made it to Lima after around 24 hours travelling. The flights from Leeds to Amsterdam and on from there to Sao Paolo were easy. I had nice travelling companions who had a holiday home in Brazil and who were
expert foragers, keeping me stocked up with snacks and chocolate throughout the flight. Arriving at Sao Paolo was an experience, flying over a city of 22 million people was quite astounding. I should have taken a photo, but you can probably imagine what skyscrapers as far as the eye can see looks like.
The last 4 or so hours of my flight between Sao Paolo and Lima were just 4 hours too much. It felt like I was almost there but I was becoming desperate for my bed. But thankfully everything went smoothly, my luggage arrived, my taxi was waiting for me and my room was clean and comfortable. I slept with a smile on my face.
Today I have been exploring Miraflores. Lima´s not a lovely city but it feels safe enough and the people are extremely friendly. I´ve been down to the sea and watched the surfers and paragliders. The Spanish I´ve been learning for the past month or so is completely inadequate but I do understand a fair bit of what is said to me and I´ve been able to get by. By this afternoon I was exhausted, partly because I am a gringo with
a huge $$ sign on my head so if I sit down or stand still for too long I am inevitably approached by people begging or trying to sell me things. They do it in a very pleasant way but it´s tiring. I´ve already been taken in my a man who told me has cancer and all 6 of his children have Downs Syndrome (an exaggeration I suspect) who ´gave´me a handmade badge with mad little Peruvian people on it then suggested if I wanted to give him some money I could. So after all this I opted out for an hour and went back to my hotel to relax. I´m now revived and ready to explore some more!
The rough plan is to leave Lima tomorrow and get a bus down to Ica then stay in nearby Huacachina for a night or two. I have to be back in Lima again to join my tour group in a couple of days and I´ll be back here again to fly out at the end of the trip so there´s plenty of time to see the colonial buildings etc.
Right, I didn´t fly all this way to sit staring at a computer screen so I´ll go and see what I can find!
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Simon Anderson
non-member comment
Hello globe trotter
What a pity at the money desk. What you're doing sounds wonderful. I wish that I was there to share it with you, probably far more than you would like to be fell running with me! This technology is marvellous, although I'm concerned that I might be distracting you from your holiday! All is well here, except I'm missing you tremendously. The dryer is now broken...