Land of the Incas
Day Eight – 6 October 2011
Weather: Sunny
Yes. It’s 6 am. Someone was wondering where I get time to type up this tale as I’m travelling.
Guess what I’m doing at 6 am when we don’t leave until 9:45?
LOL
It was three hours well spent especially considering there is nothing around this hotel except the terrace and a few trails we were recommended not to walk alone. I put my luggage out for 8:30 and went back up to the terrace to take some pics of the lake and Puno. Nice calm water and fluffy clouds.
At 9:45 we boarded our bus for our Day 8 Odyssey.
You know how they say bad things come in threes?
Okay. Bear with me.
Rosaria showed up with the bus and we boarded for the hour drive to the airport in Juliaca. Puno looked a little better than Juliaca in daylight. The city itself was founded more than 300 years ago while Juliaca was founded only 83 years ago.
We drove above the city and we pulled over onto the shoulder for an awesome view of the town and the floating islands in the distance. We got a good view of the hotel as well.
No, the first of the 3 things did not start with someone falling over the edge.
As we drove on, Rosaria continued to tell us about the daily life of people who live on the highlands. She said they get up at 4, have breakfast and pack a lunch for the day in the fields. She said they don’t cook anything at lunch as fuel (the droppings, remember?) is scarce and if the neighbours see smoke coming out of their home, they’ll be shamed for wasting fuel.
After a day in the fields, they return home and are in bed by 6 with everyone sharing the one room. But they don’t go to sleep at 6. They sit around and talk. Something that is missing in much of our society today.
By 11 we’re coming up to the airport and are passed by another tour bus.
Guess where they’re going?
No. That’s not the first bad thing, either.
Not a big deal until you see the size of the airport. There was barely enough room for three busloads of tourists checking in their luggage. If another bus had shown up, they would have been lined up out the door.
We did get entertained.
We collected our luggage as we moved through the line and checked in. Then we had to go pay our airport tax.
What they spend it on, I have no idea. Expanding the check-in area might be a good place to start. It was only about $3.
Then I went through security. They didn’t even have anyone to check to see if you set off the metal detector. We just stepped through, took our stuff and off we went. And there were shops too. So I got my Lake Titicaca fridge magnets. And a couple of Inca Kola.
So, remember our schedule? We are scheduled to get into Lima at 2:30 and have a 5 hour drive to Ica. With stops, that puts us in the hotel around 9 pm.
No problem. Right?
Okay. First thing to go wrong. The flight is delayed 40 minutes.
Now we’re getting in at about 10 pm.
Okay. No big deal. I waited 7 hours in Las Vegas. Forty minutes is nothing. A 10 pm arrival is no problem.
We board the LAN Peru airbus and are in the air before 2 pm. About an hour late in the end. We get a snack box and drink on the flight and fly over some impressive mountains again.
I have the window seat again, but this time I have a pesky wing in the way.
So, I watch the Just for Laughs Gags on the overhead video screen.
We land at 3:10 and go in to collect our luggage. That takes us to 4 pm.
Still looking at a 10 pm arrival, give or take.
No problem.
Someone taps me on the back and pulls my water bottle out from my back pack. It was half full and I had last had a drink from it at the airport…and it was squished!
Since the airport is at 13,000 feet and Lima is at sea level, the inside of the bottle had a lower air pressure than the air in Lima…so it crushed the bottle.
Science in action. LOL
So, Cesar leads us out of the airport to our familiar white and orange bus. I board and go straight to my seat – third on the right.
I never saw the well dressed man with the cell phone up to his ear. Others did but thought he was with the tour company.
We all boarded and Cesar does his count then gets back to his seat and says, “where is my bag?”
We look around. He looks around.
Then someone mentions the well dressed man with the cell phone. Apparently he had stopped the people getting on board behind me, got aboard, took the first thing he saw and got off, pushing his way passed people. No one thought much of it.
No one saw him carrying Cesar’s bag.
The bag with all his documents, his keys and copies of our passport photo pages in it.
He spoke to the police on site but they’re not that interested apparently. He has to go back on Monday to file a report.
Then we questioned the security of our passport information and he contacted the office. He checked with the office and they assured us nothing could be done with just a photocopy. I personally think the paperwork is in the trash somewhere in the airport parking lot.
Cesar was pretty stressed over this. He had to call to get the locks on his house changed immediately too.
In case you’re wondering, yes, that was number 2.
We pull up to the Costa del Sol hotel in the airport parking lot and the hotel delivers our box lunches. It has a piece of chicken, veggies, rice, a drink, apple and a cake dessert with whipped cream which was really nice. We also got a bottle of water.
Then we faced rush hour traffic in Lima. The driver went straight for the Pan American highway. We drove down a highway that was jammed tight then pulled off to go through some city streets, including one that was barely wide enough for two cars, let alone a bus, a lot of taxis and the cars and trucks pulled off the side of the road picking up stuff.
It was a symphony of horns.
Two hours after we left the airport, we were still in Lima. Not sure if the 5 hour estimate included that 2 hours.
We were on the Pan American highway and the traffic was fairly light. As we’re going along, I’m hearing what sounds like a honking horn to the back of the bus, but it never seems to stop.
Then the driver pulls over to the shoulder.
Number 3 is looming.
The bus is losing water (anti-freeze?). Luckily, he’s able to drive another kilometer and pull into a truck stop.
Cesar, who is normally shows no emotion, looks like his head is about to pop and he tells us that they’ve sent for another bus. He said 45 minutes but that with Lima traffic, it may be longer. I certainly expected it to take longer. After all, it took us 2 hours to navigate from the airport which is handier to the highway.
But we’re all hyped up on red blood cells meant for 13,000 feet. For the most part, no one really cared. There was nothing we could do about it and at least we had facilities and a store while we waited and it was warm enough outside to stroll around.
But one guy (there’s always one, isn’t there?) was getting upset because he was convinced Cesar was lying to us. He didn’t believe another bus was on the way. Now, Cesar, can be a little slow with information, but he hasn’t lied to us about anything. It’s just the way he is.
When the driver thought he had the problem fixed, this guy blew up when he saw the leak start again. He started ranting that he was going nowhere and that he wanted his luggage off the bus. The driver checked the leak again and got another tourmate to help him screw down a pesky waterhose. The tourmate was able to get a better grip and tighten it down.
The leak stopped. But buddy was refusing to board the bus, so we had to wait. Then this starts yelling at Cesar, calling him a liar and saying he had a bad attitude. (I call it ‘laid back’ moreso than anything). The guy started to raise a fist when Cesar walked away and if it wasn’t for buddy’s wife, I think buddy would have started beating on Cesar who was ignoring him by now.
Buddy realized he wasn’t going to get a reaction from Cesar and said he was going to be the bigger man and walk away.
I thought I was going to spit laughing. Here’s Cesar calmly standing with his back half to this guy, holding on to his cell phone and some papers and just saying nothing. And this guy has a fist raised.
And he thinks he’s the bigger man????
I mean, seriously, what is the sense in getting upset.
Fifteen minutes later, the bus pulls into the parking lot.
I didn’t see buddy apologize to Cesar, because he certainly didn’t deserve to be spoken to that way. He was, after all, telling us the truth. It took a total of two hours for the bus to arrive. When he actually called for it was irrelevant. A 2 hour delay is nothing.
Not after you’ve spent 7 hours waiting in the tiny McCarran Airport. (I said that when I got back on the bus and another tourmate came up to me later and said she appreciated that. It put the whole situation in perspective. Two hours was nothing).
Someone really needs to take a pill.
Cesar needs an award for his immense patience.
(If you’re listening Trafalgar, this guy gave Cesar a bad evaluation. Totally undeserved).
The luggage is transferred between buses in record time and the drivers crawl through the luggage department to make sure there’s nothing left and scour the seat area.
With everyone aboard by 8:30, we depart for the remainder of the five hour journey, but I still don’t know if it’s five hours from the airport or five hours from Lima.
LOL
I haul out my smart phone and start watching a movie.
But try and keep my eyes open after 10 pm? No go. I half slept the rest of the way and we pulled into the Las Dunas Hotel in Ica just before midnight. So, I guess the answer was that it was another 4 hours to Ica.
It was 12:30 am by the time I went to sleep.
Oh, did I mention wake-up was at 4:30 am?
Oh yeah!
Go to Day Nine
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