Lunes, 30-Junio-2014
Sunday was a very late night and today (Monday) was much too early of a morning. The 7 hour flight went by surprisingly fast and we landed on time around 11:30pm (CST). Lima is 1 hour behind Atlanta. Getting thru immigrations and customs took another hour but finally I made it out and found Danel, our FIMRC coordinator. There were 4 of us on the ATL-->LIM flight and we were the final 4 to arrive in our group.Lesson 1: The drivers here are crazy and red lights are apparently optional. Our driver took us to Che Legarto Hostel which is in the Miraflores district about 30 min south of the airport. Lets just say I'm glad it was dark and I couldn't exactly see what was happening while we drove.
Lesson 2: This city of 9 MILLION never sleeps. We checked in around 1:30am (2:30am Atlanta time) and Danel suggested we go grocery shopping right now... Um what? I'm tired but he knows best so off we went to buy drinking water and a few snacks for the journey to Huancayo. The grocery store in Lima was surprisingly full of people for a Sunday night at 2am and so were the streets.
Lesson 3: 150 miles takes 8-9 hours to drive. We left the hostel at 6:30am (so glad I could get that 4hr nap in last night) and went to Cruz del Sur autobus estacion.
The luxury motorcoach (complete with reclining seats and personal TV screens) will take 8-9 hours to transverse the 150 miles to Huancayo. This is because the entire ride is switchbacks up and back down the giant mountain range. We will be going as high as 14,000 feet at one point before coming back down to 10,000 feet in a Huancayo.
Lesson 4: Driving to reach a 14,000 ft altitude can pop a vein in your eye. But besides that the altitude medicine worked and I was able to capture some great pictures! The lack of oxygen did make most of us pass out tho so it was a sleepy ride.
Lesson 5: New and old can co-exist very happily. Huancayo itself is the perfect mix of old Peruvian culture (Cuechua) and modern day hustle-and-bustle. Its a medium sized city located high in the mountains and off the beaten path.
Lesson 6: Host families are the best! We arrived safely in Huancayo and setted in with our host family. There are 12 of us sharing 1 bathroom along with the family of 4 who lives here. Our host parents are David & Aniña and I don't know how they do it! What a wonderful family to take on 12 Americans at the same time.
Lesson 7: Peruvians are very realistic. One cool thing about this city is that most building look unfinished bc they are. People only build as much as they can afford so all roofs can be accesed by stairs and that's where people line dry their clothes.
Final Lesson: Spending 16 out of the past 24 hours traveling is EXHAUSTING! I left Atlanta at 5pm on Sunday and arrived in Huancayo at 5pm Monday. In those 24 hours, I took a 7 hour flight, 1 hour taxi, and 8 hour bus ride. Needless to say I passed out under my alpaca blanket and slept like a baby :)
