While it didn't get off to the same start as Tanzania in 2011 (see 'Tanzania - at least no one was hurt' July 2011), the
2014-Cohen-Weinstein voyage didn't start without some adjustments.
Flying at 7 AM on a Saturday sucks. Firstly because you have
to be at the airport at 5 AM, which is an ungodly hour, and secondly…well there
is no secondly. Unless you count the fact that that means I couldn't go
out that night, but had to be “responsible” and an “adult” of some kind… So
when I received a text from United that said my flight is delayed by three
hours, my first thought was ‘great, who wants to go to the bar! Vacation has
begun!’ quickly followed by my second thought of ‘ugghhh….what about my connecting flight?’ I soon realized that the delay
of the first flight meant I would miss the connection in Houston on my way to
Lima, by a mere ten minutes. Options…stay overnight in Houston, find another flight
that connects, or wait until Sunday and just fly out that day at 7AM again.
In the end I went with option A: fly to Houston on my
original 7 AM flight, stay overnight in Houston, and depart on the next flight
the next day. If you’re thinking ‘what about a hotel? Would the airline provide
one or would you need to sleep in the airport? What about food? How annoyed
were you? Why didn't you take the option United provided and fly to Houston,
then to New Jersey and then to Lima?’ Which would be dumb, don’t ask that
again. But the other questions are appropes and as it turned out United
actually treated me very well; they provided food vouchers in Vancouver, and a
hotel voucher and additional food vouchers in Houston. I also got upgraded to
Economy Plus for my flight from Houston to Lima.
On the flight were several other people who missed
connections, including one guy from Vancouver. We ended up chatting in the
hotel, and I joined him for drinks with a friend of his who lived in Houston. A
friend of his friends was at a combined hookah bar/night club, and despite me
wearing shorts and running shoes, thanks to the friend of a friend of a guy I
met that day, I got in. Partied at the Hangar in Houston! Several free drinks
later and a $45 cab ride back to the hotel, totally worth it! The next day I
watched some TV, including my first time watching ‘Can’t Buy me Love’ and I was
off to meet Amanda and Jory in Lima baby!
After a 6.5 hour flight, sitting next to another guy from
Calgary who was stocked up on mini bottles of vodka, rum and scotch, and
willing to share, I arrived drunk in a country where I didn’t even know how to
ask for the bathroom (bano – with the squally line over the n – as it turns
out). Happily I was greeted with a sign that said ‘Samuel Weistein – Welcome’.
Tarsis spoke English, but Luis, the driver and her to-be-husband, did not. All
good; Tarsis and I chatted and Luis piped in in Spanish once in a while. They
are both very nice. Upon arriving at the hostel A and J were asleep, but I woke
them up anyway! Peru!
This morning we were fed a chicken sandwich for breaky in
the hostel (which was really good!) and got picked up for our tour day. In the
morning we went to Plaza de Mayor and the San Francisco Catacombs. The
catacombs had lots of bones, sorted by bone, and displayed for visitors to see.
It turns out that the monks in the monastery did this because they needed to
raise money through visitors to keep the monastery…monastery-ing. After that,
our tour ended…sorta. Of course none of us printed out our itinerary, and since
the driver told us that was the end, we believed him. We went for lunch on our
own to a small local Lima eatery, and afterwards, around 1 PM, started to question
if that was actually the end of it or if we were meant to have an afternoon
tour.
We decided to call Julio, our trip organizer. After speaking
with Julio four times, it was confirmed that we should have gotten lunch with
the tour and we had a museum tour in the afternoon… so, we arranged for them to
come pick us up! And we went on our tour to the museum of gold Peru, which
documents some of the golden artifacts from pre-Inca times. There aren't many
artifacts from the Inca because the Spanish Conquistadors stole it all.
Well, after a bit of a wacky start to the trip we are all back
in the hostel again. Thankfully no one got robbed this time, and despite a
delay in Houston we are back on track and the only thing that got missed was
spending some extra time together. Now we are thinking about going for dinner,
even though we just ate at the corner taco/enchilada place. Delish. Tomorrow we
have a 5 AM ride to the airport and are off to the Puerto Maldonado in the Amazon
for three days. Onward!
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