Lima / Ica / Nazca, Peru

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August 29, 2005
It´s 5AM and we are in the Lima airport. In a foggy valium haze we manage to find info on a hostel and grab a cab to Miraflores. We go back to sleep for several hours. Maybe we should have split a valium?? When we finally walk downstairs there are 2 tour guides waiting for us in the lobby. Have they been here since we checked in 5 hours ago? We walk to the Brazilian Embassy to get my visa only to find out that they are closed for 2 days due to a local holiday. We are stuck in Lima till Wednesday. The smog here is enough to choke a horse. We are frustrated and there isn´t much we wanted to do in Lima. We visit a few museums, shop and work on some phone & camera downloading issues. We refer to Lonely Planet for dinner plans. They rave about this mexican joint, Sí Señor, but it turns out to be less than fantastic. We stop at an American sports bar by our hostel and share a pitcher of Cusqueña which is the local beer.

August 30, 2005
We find a great little pastry shop around the corner. We have some empanadas and café con leches (latté) for breakfast and work on our journal which is the 1st time we´ve written in it. We are only 11 days behind schedule! Oh well, with nothing to do in Lima, we´ll have plenty of time to catch up. We reference lonely planet again & travel to central Lima to hit some museums. The Francisco Pizzaro tomb is closed due to the holiday but we visit a Spanish Inquisition torture museum and some catacombs. Both tours would have been alot better if the guides spoke a lick of English. Back in Miraflores, we walk around the mall which is on the coastal cliffs. It´s very foggy out so the view isn´t what it could be but I have a great imagination so in my mind, it´s gorgeous! We take several peoples recommendations and have dinner at Rosa Nautica even though it´s way out of our budget. The food is phenomenal and the Pisco Sours are lethal.

August 31, 2005
We have breakfast at a cafe that is straight out of a Paris postcard. We get to the Brazilian Embassy just before noon to get my visa so we can get the heck out of this place. Much to our dismay, they close at noon today (even though the door says 8PM). The staff is very unfriendly and very unhelpful. We take the application and go. They wanted to keep my passport for 3 days to issue the visa but I need it to travel thru Peru so we decide to skip Brazil all together as at this point if we spend another day here, my lungs might fail due to the smog & pollution. We contact a business associate of Dan´s brother at the Peruvian airline to hook us up with the first available flights out of here. He arranges a trip to Nazca and Puerto Maldonado for us. We leave mañana. YEAH! We celebrate by having Pisco martinis, caiprihinas and ceviche at the Marriott hotel bar.

September 1, 2005
We head out early for the airport. The AeroCondor ticket agent gave us what we thought were boarding passes but we find out different after standing in the wrong line for 20 minutes. We have to go back downstairs to get boarding passes and then get back in line to pay the airport tax before heading thru security. We rush to our gate as we are now running late only to find out the flight is delayed an hour. We hit Duncan Donuts for breakfast. I order a coffee and get Nescafe. It tastes like butt! We arrive in Ica and take a puddle jumper to Nazca. The flight to the Nazca Lines isn´t bad until our pilot starts acting as our sightseeing guide. To allow both sides of the plane to see the lines etched in the desert floor below, he dips the plane and takes super sharp turns. The girl behind us actually uses the airsick bag - luckily there was no sympathy vomiting. Dan is three shades of green and closes his eyes. He missed the last few lines but didn´t care. I manage not to yack but we both feel sick for the rest of the day. Everyone was silent on the flight back to Ica. We have lunch at a resort where there are alpacas roaming freely on the golf course. We visit a museum where most of the artifacts have been stolen. Not very interesting as all we are looking at are pictures of what they used to have. I can go to the library for that! We watch a video on the mystery behind the Nazca Lines before boarding the plane back to Lima. They are very interesting but honestly, if we´d known we were gonna be so sick from the flight we both would have been fine with just viewing the Lines via the internet. We fly into Lima and into a dark cloud. A plastic factory caught fire and the sky is black with smoke and ash. And we didn´t think the air quality could get worse.

September 2, 2005
Back to the airport and this time we know to get our boarding passes first. Of course we still manage to screw something up with our bag check-in and have to stand in the same line twice but we are so happy to be leaving Lima that we are in high spirits. The guy at the security gate recognizes us. We are officially regulars! Waiting for the plane a flight attendant approaches us with a phone. It´s Nestor, our airline contact, calling to see how things are going. We look really important to everyone that is watching. She bumps us to first class which turns out to be just the front row. No extra luxuries.

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