last day in Chile, a night at the airport and on to Peru
My flight to Lima was at 6:55am Wednesday morning. (only flight available to me with this ticket) You can’t get a bus to the airport until 6:00am, so I had to choose between paying a lot of money for a taxi, and booking another night at the hostel, or, taking the last bus the night before for $4 and spending 7 hours overnight at the airport. The latter is what I went with, fun stuff.
Before any of that happened, I had the entire day to kill in Santiago so I took the metro to the far side of town, to what were supposed to be interesting historic barrios. I did not find them interesting, instead found the area I was walking around in to be becoming increasingly dodgy and abandoned the walk, heading back to the city centre.
I had a churrassco for lunch, wandered around the pedestrian areas for a while and stopped in at one of the “cafe con piernas”, had a coffee and headed back towards the hostel to kill the rest of the night. I had two of by far the largest empanadas I’ve seen for dinner and then rolled myself down to the station.
By the time I had boarded the airplane around 6:15am, I was very tired, hardly sleeping in the airport. The flight proved a great place to catch up on some of the lost sleep, nearly 4 hours long, but not before watching the stunning scenery straight after take off. Flying North parallel to the andes with clouds in the valleys, mountains poking out of them and then watching the sun rise over those mountains was nothing short of spectacular. Then I fell asleep.
Arrival to Peru was straightforward, I had the usual 2 forms to fill out and the additional currently popular health form because of swine flu. I am convinced no one ever sees these and they go straight in the bin, waste of paper. Passport with a fresh new stamp in it I met my driver from the hostel at the airport and we headed off through the, as he called it, the “loco lima drivers”. Amazingly, I understood a fair amount of what he was saying in spanish and could carry out a decent conversation with him. Unlike in Chile, here people don’t talk at the speed of light.
The weather in Lima was grey, bleak, on and off drizzle which is the typical winter scene apparently. At least it’s still 20 degrees in the day. After dropping my stuff at the hostel I ran out for some lunch and got my bearings in the area. I’m staying in the Barranco district of Lima and after all the negative comments I’ve heard about Lima I was very pleasantly surprised by this area at least. Very near the ocean, full of old, interesting buildings and the main plaza of the district is one block from my hostel full of bars, restaurants and cafes.
After spending the afternoon exploring the district and a power nap I went for dinner, and had some delicious Peruvian food. I don’t remember the name, but it was rice, layered with mince in a sauce with fried plátano. Brilliant stuff. The dish cost $4 as well, bueno. So after just one day in Peru I’m liking it already, just have to pay a lot more attention when crossing the road than in Chilé!
Tomorrow my Uncle flies in and we will meet up and he’ll be traveling with me for my last 5 weeks outside the US, in Peru and Colombia. Yes I only have 5 weeks until I fly to Miami, time had really started going fast recently…
Tags: Chile, Peru, Travel
Adam
Talk slower but drive faster.