Hola from Lima, Peru!

Yes, I am still here and it is a very long story. This trip has been operating through a bad luck fog from the very beginning...I will write more when I am home tomorrow (finalmente!), but here´s the summary of the stuff that has gone wrong. I missed my initial flight from London to New York, due to a public transportation nightmare in London. So I had to go back home, and get up at 4am the next morning to go back out to Gatwick. When I arrived at Gatwick the next morning, they said even though I had spoken with one of their colleagues the night before and received a standby ticket for that morning, because I had missed my original flight, my whole reservation had been cancelled, so I no longer had a return flight. !!!! We got that sorted out though, and I did get to New York in time to join my parents for the Broadway show my mum had booked weeks earlier. When we got home after the show I´d essentially been awake for 36 hours, but only had 6 hours to sleep before I got up to get ready for my drive to Boston. Nicole and Rob had a beautiful wedding, great weather, and I had a blast at the reception. Plus, I got an invitation back out to the Cotswolds to Rob´s parents´beautiful home ;) After partying till the wee hours, I had two hours of sleep, got up, grabbed a Red Bull, and started the drive to Vivien´s house, as we were going to the airport together. I was within 10 minutes of her house when I got a flat tire. Because it was April 1, she thought I was playing an April Fools´Joke on her, and as I burned through 15 pounds of UK credit on my UK mobile in three minutes, I had to yell at her a bit to get her to take me seriously and come pick me up. Luckily, a cop was passing, told me I could leave the car there until my parents could pick it up, and Viv and I made it to the airport on time for our flight. I called my parents laughing hysterically, this being typical of traveling with Vivien, and arranged for them to retrieve the car once they returned from the Poconos with the Heilalas. We made it to Peru without incident, although sleeping overnight in the Lima airport was an experience...I´ll save that for another blog. We arrived at the hotel in Cusco where they asked me for my passport and immigration document, which I realised I had lost (the immigration document, not the passport). Apparently that is going to cost me some money later on tonight when we finally get on our flight back to Newark. The following morning, we got up at 5am to catch our ride out to the trailhead for the Caminos Inka (Inca Trail), and we had a small rest stop at a little town where I tried to put in my contacts. The left one was ripped almost completely in half, and I had no spares...the spares were in the backpack I decided to leave behind after I missed my initial flight in London! So I hiked the Inka Trail in my glasses,grrr. I also burned the hell out of the tops of both hands on the third day-- the rest of my body was covered up, and I forgot about my hands. They turned a deep red purple and became puffy. It's pretty terrifying to make a mistake like that with my family's medical history, but it's not like I can roll back time and remember the sun block. To skip ahead to the end of our trip, we spent the last three days of our holiday in the Amazon basin, about 4 hours upriver on the Tambopata from Puerto Maldonado. We had a flight from PM to Lima, via Cusco. Our flight was delayed, but we eventually got to Cusco. They had us wait on the plane for 45 minutes, then told us that due to mechanical problems, the flight was now cancelled. We got off the plane, and after much negotiating on Viv´s part, they rebooked us for the following day through Miami to land in Newark at about 11pm tonight. They gave us a very nice hotel and food and transport and telephone cards. This morning, we were booked on an 8am flight to Lima. We got to the airport, and they gave us boarding passes for the 7:40am flight. Long story short, that flight was delayed due to "adverse weather conditions" though the sky looked fine to me, until 10:40 am which was when the flight to Miami was scheduled to leave. Had we been given boarding passes for the 8am flight which we should have had, we would have made the flight, as that flight did take off at 9:15am. So we got to Lima eventually, went to the LAN desk, where they tried to tell us they were going to send us overnight to Miami, and Miami to Newark. I said no way, you're going to rebook us on the same direct flight from Lima to Newark that we were supposed to be on last night. They tried to tell me it wasn't showing up on their screen and there was no such flight, but I knew they were trying to pull a fast one because they aren't partners with Continental and didn't want to pay to rebook us. I told him he had better look up the flight, and sure enough, it was there. They then sent us to the Sheraton where we had a room for the day, gave us taxis, and really sumptuous lunch and dinner buffets, and here I am on the computer, checking email for the first time in two weeks.
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Ok, I was kicked off the computer at that point on April 10, as my "free" internet time was apparently done. It's now April 14 and I'm in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan at the Hampton Inn, which I must admit I'm pretty impressed with...however, on the way here, we had a connecting flight through Detroit, where-- you can probaby guess-- our flight up north here was cancelled. Yup. We went to a hotel overnight, and got on a flight at 6am the following morning. It's been good to see the new assisted living facility where my grandfather is now living, and he is taking us all out to Applebee's tonight (the fancy place for dinner in town, lol) because they have "everything you could possibly want, you can have whatever you want." I showed him my pictures from Peru, and gave him a hat made of alpaca wool, and he continues to tell people that his granddaughter went to Machu Poochu. We've played hearts and reminisced, and Grandpa has given me my grandmother's wedding and engagement rings, which I now wear around my neck. He says that has always been the tradition in this family.

Tomorrow I catch flights from here to Detroit, Detroit to JFK, and JFK to the UK. That's assuming the Nor'easter bearing down on the East Coast doesn't throw a kink into those plans. Considering how my holiday has gone thus far, I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up at home on Sunday night, and taking off Monday instead. Not exactly the good impression I want to make on my boss, considering I have an interview for Senior II coming up on April 25. Sigh. Oh well, what will be, will be.