Lima/Barranco and home January 22 – 25, 2015 2

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Precisely on time (amazing considering the traffic in to Lima) we arrived at the Excluciva depot in Lima. We jumped into a private taxi endorsed from Excluciva and made our way to the 3B Barranco Bed & Breakfast.

What a lovely little place. It is very chic, ultra modern and very clean. Apparently it was an old house that was in disrepair so the owner tore it down and built the new structure instead. The space was very narrow so it was a challenge for him and his niece (an architect) to design a functional hotel space, but they managed to do a great job!

We checked in and immediately went to the Canta Rana Cevicheria for lunch. The food was very good and filling. Fero headed back to the B&B for a nap and I went for a walk through the Barranco district. What a gorgeous community with lots of restaurants, bars and coffee shops. I had read it was a very bohemian area so was a little sceptical on the neighbourhood. The Main Street was a wee bit shady but perfectly fine in the daytime. Looking back I wished we would have stayed here when we first arrived on the trip.

Around 4:30pm I made my way back to the hotel. We were still full from lunch so around 7pm I went to the local grocery (that is always a fun, and sometimes challenging thing to do in a foreign country!) to pick up some snacks to go along with our wine. We had our little picnic but unfortunately the wine tasted off so we threw it out – whaaa. We were both pretty beat from the long bus ride so we fell asleep very quickly.

January 23 – And then, around midnight it hit us……….a horrible case of food poisoning or who knows what. Not sure if it was some of the seafood we ate, or the bad wine, or maybe the sausage and cheese in our snacks. What ever it was nasty and we spent our whole last day in Peru in bed, unable to even go out for a bite to eat.

Fero managed to go downstairs and bring up breakfast of dry toast and juice which helped and then around 4pm, after an attempt to do this myself, we asked the staff if someone could pick up some food for us. What fabulous people they were. One of the fellows went to a cafe and got us chicken soup and avocado sandwiches, a litre of mango juice and delivered it to our room. What a godsend! Thankfully we kept the food down, although we didn’t eat much of it. We were able to fall asleep which was a very good thing.

January 24 – we awoke before the alarm and were very slow to move although we did feel much better. We packed up the bags – thankfully we travelled light this trip so packing was a snap! We managed to go downstairs for breakfast and thank all the staff for their wonderful help yesterday.

By 9:00 am we were checked out and on our way to the airport. It was a warm clear day in Lima and it was a shame to leave on a glorious day like this. Our flight was on time however it wasn’t the beautiful new plane like the flight here. This one was smaller and the seats quite close together so it was a very uncomfortable ride home – even more so with our upset bellies. We managed though and arrived in LAX around 6:30pm. Unfortunately there had been a schedule change and we were now going to have to overnight and catch a flight tomorrow – sigh.

The LAN staff were very helpful and finally around 9:00pm we were in the Embassy Suites South (quite nice!) and ordered food with our vouchers given to us by the airline. Off to bed for hopefully a few good hours of sleep.

January 25 – it was a short night as we woke at 2:30am before the alarm. We caught the 4:00am shuttle as our flight leaves at 6:15am.

We were told last night to go to the Alaska Airlines terminal 6 for our flight. When we arrived there, we were not on Alaska and they did not have a direct flight to Vancouver. Our ticket reservations said we were protected on WS which is the code for Westjet. Immediately we ran across the parking area to Terminal 2 where Westjet is located.

The checkin counters were there but not another sole! OMG what airline are we on!! I was too out of it last night to question the LAN staff member and was kicking myself now. Time is ticking away and I had to find out where we need to go or we will spend another day at LAX!

Thankfully my background in travel kicked in and I started checking the flight number and it turns out we are on Delta Airlines out of Terminal 5 – just next door to Alaska! Arggghhhhh! We ran back across the parking lot and I tried to check in with our ticket numbers, our names and nada. We stood in line for assistance and then Fero said, did you try checking in with our passports. Yeahhhhhhh that worked. We dropped off our bags, cleared security and arrived at the gate well before boarding time -whew!!! I just keep thinking, what would someone that doesn’t travel very often have done?

Three short hours later we finally arrived in Vancouver and spent the day sleeping and relaxing. It is great to be home!!