Day 1: Travel day

Have you ever been on a flight which starts out with people throwing their arms up, roller coaster style, and shrieking with delight when the pilot puts the pedal to the metal, and ends up with people applauding uproariously upon touchdown?  I hadn´t until yesterday, when I made the final leg of my journey to Lima, Peru.  I looked to the girl sitting next to me, and said, "This is going to be awesome."

The flight itself was amazing.  I had the good fortune of sitting next to Leah, a super nice med student at Loyola, who was actually interested in talking to me (or at least faked it well) and was equally excited for her journey.  They actually FED us (what a concept!)...not once, but TWICE.  A snack around 10:30 PM before we made our final descent was the perfect thing to top off a tiring day of travel and hold me over until 5:40 the next morning when I would board another plane for Iquitos.  And, they gave us a complimentary drink.  Leah was very appreciative of a generous pour of boxed wine.

I, on the other hand, got really excited about the food (I know- you´re shocked).  The flight attendant, being the boisterous and jovial guy that he is, gave us each an extra dessert.  Score!

We landed in Lima and (fortunately) made it through customs.  My luggage arrived safely, but the same could not be said for that of Leah or Mike, her friend that she had met while waiting at the gate in Atlanta.  We waited around for a while, but ultimately discovered that they would have to wait until tonight to get their luggage from Chicago.  Hopefully they did! Here they express their true feelings about their luggage being lost.

Eamonn and I hung out for a while in the Lima airport, took advantage of exotic establishments like Starbucks, and finally said our good-byes after admiring the collection of sharp objects at the security checkpoint.

On the flight to Iquitos, the man sitting next to me asked me if I was going to Iquitos for the cock fighting festivities as part of the Fiesta de San Juan.  Ummm...no.  Unfortunately I´ll be in a lodge three hours up the Amazon river by the time that festival starts.  Shucks.

Got off the plane and it´s really true that the Guns ´N Roses song "Welcome to the Jungle" starts blaring the second you step off the plane.  Well, at least it did in my head.  The heat and humidity hit you like a ton of bricks.  It´s hotter and more humid here than anywhere else I´ve ever been.  And, as I was reminded by a clerk today, this is their winter.  Ha!  A far cry from Minnesnowta. 

My concerns about nobody being there to pick me up from the airport were totally unfounded.  There were, in fact, two people waiting to pick me up.  One from the lodge, one from the hotel.  I went with the one from the hotel after reminding the lodge guy that I wouldn´t be going there until the following day.  He was there to pick up other people, anyway, so it wasn´t a big deal.

Rode in the back of a van with a bunch of Peruvian men, all of whom spoke rapid fire Spanish and all but ignored me.  I was fine with this, as my brain was half mush after not sleeping for 28 hours.  I took in the city scene, watched as motorized bikes blazed past each other, and was reminded of traffic in China.  Towards the end, though, two guys did strike up a conversation with me and turned out to be extremely nice.

Slept for a couple hours, had lunch at a cafe overlooking the Amazon River, took care of some miscelaneous business and explored the city, then went back to sleep for a couple more hours.