Hi Lima Bye Lima

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Geo: -12.0931, -77.0465

Time for the second last chapter of our honeymoon. Time to fly to Peru to join an intrepid tour and see Machu Picchu. We had a bit of a sleep-in in Valparaiso this morning, with checkout not until noon. We had a Mozio transfer booked for 3pm from Ibis Hotel, Valparaiso to Santiago airport. A 1.5 hour drive would leave us plenty of time to catch our 7.20pm flight to Lima.

To pass the time between noon and 3pm, we left our luggage at Ibis hotel for safekeeping and set off up the hill to Tripadvisors number 1 restaurant in the city for lunch, Cafe del Pintor. It opened at one so the timing was perfect. We took the 3 course set menu. The food and service was very good without being mind blowing. We allowed ourselves a final bit of time to wander the streets before returning to the hotel for our luggage and transfer.

Our driver, Jorge got us to the airport issue free. The scenic drive there wasn't bad either. An issue however, was about to arise. We were greeted in the departure lounge by a billboard message clearly advising the 7.20 flight to Lima was cancelled... Luckily there was another flight two hours later. The issue here was our pickup in Lima. They'd be there at say 9pm Peru time (2 hours earlier than Chile), rather than 11pm. As a means of apology, LAN airways offered us a free buffet lunch to the worst buffet lunch I think Ive ever had. The Raspberry juice was okay, and they had toffee apples.. although the apples within were a little past their prime.

Once we'd cleared security, we found a Starbucks with feeble wifi. On such short notice with no phone, by best bet to rearrange our Lima transfer was to email our travel agent, Andy. After several attempts and dropouts, I managed to get an email through with new details. He replied quickly, but as I saw his email in my inbox and clicked on it, the internet dropped out never to return. Would we have a lift, or would we be organizing a taxi somewhere around midnight? Who knew?

Our flight rolled into Lima around 1am Chile time/ 11pm Peru time. We cleared customs, grabbed our bags and entered the arrivals area to a sea of thousands of taxi drivers and pickup transfers bearing name signs. Fortunately, eventually, we found ours.The drive to our hotel took around 40 minutes, and we checked in around midnight. From what I could see of Lima in the dark, traffic was hectic, people were everywhere, plenty of billboards and simple concrete blocky buildings. A bit of an urban jungle.We were horrified to hear from the receptionist that our group was leaving the hotel at 5.30am for a flight to Cusco. We lay down to sleep around 1am. Brutal.

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