Jetlagged but on a mission!!

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After a long flight we had no idea what time of day it was, all we knew is that we had eaten breakfast about four times, tried to watch numerous movies, slept a little, got off one plane, only to get on another, to then got off this one to get on another until finally 36 hours later our passports were stamped and we entered Peru! There were definitely some memorable moments on this plane trip and it really was a mission to get to Lima! The five hours we spent in LA airport, which I might add is no doubt the worst airport in the world, definitely tests the relationship! It was hard not to be cranky with each other. There was nothing to do and no food worth eating. It was fries, a burger or a hot dog with fries or a hot dog or burger made from fries... in the end we chose simply to have a cup of the oil that the food was cooked in!! We thought it was the least fatty ha ha. We ended up with some fake noodles... and it was only 8am in the morning US time, what a breaksfast!!!

LAN airline to Lima were great and I had them all fooled at first. Dark hair and dark eyebrows can do that.... and so in the beginning they asked me what I wanted to drink in Spanish. My simple reply of Cola por favour had no one fooled though, and from that point on they asked me in English. Obviously i have a distinct aussie twang to Cola please when said in Spanish... at least I tried!!

Once through customs and with our baggage, we found our driver and he took us to our car - although we had a card with our name on it held up high by our dirver, we were not picked up by a flashy limo he he!! We exited the airport and somewhere between departing the airport and getting on the main roads, our driver manifested into Michael Schumaker. I must have missed the part where he drove through the phone box a la Clark Kent/Superman style. The suppossed 40 minute drive took a little over 25 minutes... I am not sure if this is the way he always drives, or whether it was the late night or the shady parts of town we had to go through to get to our hostel, in anycase, we made it in one piece, literally. We were no longer two people, we were one as we had been squashed together in the hellish corners at top speed!!! I think I had my eyes closed. (But I was to find out later, this was nothing compared to a number of our bus rides... more on those later).

That night was quite restful for the most part, I was however woken early with some construction workers and the early school drop off, but Cam, yet again, was fast asleep. I had been warned by Cam´s friends who travelled with him in Central America that he sleeps through everything and I was beginning to believe this was not a myth but the absolute truth!

The next day we headed to Ica and Huacachina, a mere 5 hours from Lima, a breeze considering the amount of time we had spent getting to Lima in the first place. At the bus terminal we only had about 7 minutes spare before the bus departed and we had not had lunch so we wanted to get snacks. Our limited spansish was not going to help us, however our sign language did. I pointed to the attendants watch, held up five fingers followed by the eat sign language and a thumbs up. He smiled and nodded. We did wonder if he was laughing at us because were going to miss the bus, but alas we did not and we got our snacks and jumped on board.

We slept most of the way and arrived at Huacachina in time for a late dinner. We had a chat to some of the tourists there who we met at dinner and they highly recommended the sand buggy tour from our hostel. We decided we would do this on our last day in Huacachina before we got on the overnight bus to Arequipa.

The next day we had booked a winery tour, yes we had been conned into it from our taxi driver, but for $12 we weren´t too fussed and thought it might be nice. The next morning we waited for him to arrive and sure enough he came on time, only he was in a different car and his brother was with him. Some excuse about his car being sick and needed to be fixed...hmmm. The sceptic in me thought we were definitely being taken for a ride... as it turned out, no we weren´t. Our guide came part way with us, then we dropped him at the mechanic (there was his poor car in pieces) and we continued our tour with his brother.

We thoroughly enjoyed the trip to the first winery Tacama, the oldest in Peru. We got to tast a lot of different wines and Cam nudged me and said to me to atleast plant a smile and a mmm yummy look on my face, rather than screwing it up everytime I tried some of the wine!! Woops. I couldn´t help it, it was just too sweet. We then got to try Pisco, and this was hilarious!! There is a special way to drink it.. a whole methodology in drinking Pisco correctly. Firstly, smell the Pisco, take a deep breath in, hold that breath, take the Pisco in your mouth, swirl it around your mouth, swallow it all the way down to your belly button and then breathe out. This was more intense than any Yoga move believe me!! Drinking it this way is meant to allow you to enjoy the aroma, the texture and the taste. It was quite difficult. I mean serioulsy, all I wanted to do was chink my shot glass with Cam (spilling part of it as tradition when you are in a pub), slam it down as fast as possible, high fiving Cam while simultaneously shouting Oh yeah! But no, this was no Frankston pub (he he) and so the ladette within was restrained! I followed the Pisco drinking method and honestly just after one sniff I thought I was going to be sick. I breathed in, sipped it, swirled it and swallowed it and then breathed out. As I did, I got that horrible after shot sensation of the cold shivers and that ugh feeling in the pit of my stomach. I tried hard to put a smile and mmm yum look on my face, but our guide was not fooled. He just laughed! Cam on the other hand was truly smiling and nodding. He was either a very good actor or for some crazy reason he had enjoyed it... it was the latter. He sat there and had a number more half shots with the guide of the winery and i thought any minute I am going to have to carry him out of here!! I was wondering to myself after he had yet another half shot, is it the chromosones or the age?

Anyway, we headed to another winery and was amazed again by the manual labour put into the wine making process here. It was very interesting and hard to imagine how much work actually goes into one bottle. Nothing compared to the process back home. Lunch was traditional Peruvian lunch, followed by more wine and Pisco tasting and to top it off chocolate tasting. There was no fake smiles when I tried the chocolate! It was awesome.

We got back to hostel and at this point decided it was time to attempt the sand dunes... I will leave this adventure for the next entry, but you may have seen some of the photos on facebook already!

Until the next entry

Mel

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