peru 2011

It,s 05am waiting at the airport in Lima for my connection to Cuzco where i will meet up with my parents who are driving the panamerican highway with their own vw bus ...

It has been quite a trip sofar .. Due to snow in NY my first flight was canceled from Brussels, I was pleased that they gave me a hotel incl meals in the mercure airport hotel. Otherwise I would have had to go back to Tilburg and then back to brussels the next morning ... no way ..... The next day I was hopefull that my flight would take me on the road, and it did, but 2,5 hours late which meant I would most likely miss my connection in newark, and as there was no other flight to Lima, I was gonna be stuck at the airport for 24hrs .. mmmm...... nottin I could do about it .. In Newark I had to collect my bags and go trough customs before I could re'check my bags for the next flight,and find out if I had missed my flight or not, there was a chance that the other flight was delayed also. The customs took ages, with very big arseholes behind the counters .... clearly treating coloured and muslims differently, also me with my dreads was made to wait longer ... luckily I have learned to shut up, cause if I would have said something they would have only slowed things down even more ... When i finally could re-check my bags, they told me the other flight was delayed, and i was gonna run, I would be abel to make it .. woeaaahhhhh ... yesss .... I ran like a madman across the airport to gate c 126 ... even managed to talk my way to the front of the Q for the next bagage scan ... but upon arrival at the gate, I was told the flight had left 2 minutes earlier .. fuck me ....

Totally out of breath, and with the sweat in my underpants I was very very pissed off .. they knew we were on our way, but still they left .. ok ... switch ... now I needed to make sure I was gonna go on the next days flight, which was almost full as the day prior, no flights had left Newark due to the snow ... also I was gonna see if they would get me a hotel again like in Brussels, cause I also realised that as my flight to cuzco was on the 30th very early morning I was up for another night at the airport (which is going on right now) which is not much fun as you have to watch your stuff and try to get some sleep ...

First they told me 4 times that all they could do was give me a list of hotels, but that they could not offer me a free night .... I could get a paper which entitled me to a distressed passenger rrate ..... which would still be around 65 euro ... or 80 dollars .... not acceptable .. that is what I told the lady that was helping me, or better, that ws trying to wave me off .... and again, she said the same thing .. and again and again ... so I decided to ask for the supervisor as I was not gonna accept this .--- 10 minutes later the supervisor decided not to come out but give the lady the green light to get me my room for free .. yessss ...... they tied to blame it on the weather ... being an act of god (wha ha ) so I told them that in brusseld i actually did get a room, with the same reasons for delay .. they must have checked that in their system .... cause now they changed their act ..
I also got meal vouchers again ... so I was ok with it all ....

Unfortunately I was too tired to go into NY city for couple of hours, so I decided to take a nice relaxing bath, have a good meal and get some proper sleep ...

And today I finally made my way to Lima, where I am right now, spending from 23pm till 08am before my flight to cuzco will depart ... 1 hour ago I could drop off my big bag, and with only 3 hours to go I decided to go for a coffee .. and get some help from the pc and the screen to keep me awake .... so .. here is the first stage of my 5 week adventure ...

My mum and dad have already arrived in cuzco, they also have setup my tent next to their bus and they will be picking me up in 5 hours time .... I am preparing for some bigtime altitude sickness as cuzco is way high up in the mountains .--- will need loads of sleep and some aspirine I guess .... acclimatise before I will be joining my parents on the way to Machu Pichu .-.-- we will go by train as the inca trail is closed in february for repair works ... will return another time to do the inca trail properly ! After that I wil jump onboard my parents bus to go towards Nazca and on to the sea and up towards ecuador .... Might get off the bus earlier but I think I will stay on board for 3 weeks untill I get to Quito where I will have to choose to either go to the jungle or go for a nice mountain trekking adventure ..

and in case you are ever flying with continental, please do not expect a veggie meal .... the fuckers managed to do this twice ..... leaving me with nottin but salad and bread .... good thing i brought some cheese and bread myself for the first stage and some leftover pizza for flight nr 2 ----

lets see what they will get me for flight nr 3 -------

ciao4now