lima for the first time

not only lima, but south america for the first time! traveling to machu picchu has been a desire for my wife, tk, and i for many years. peru itself has intrigued me since the 5th grade when i chose the country of peru to do a report on. half a century later, i am finally here.

true confession - neither of us speak spanish beyond a few words or phrases. i won't flagelate myself about it, but that deficit made looking into doing a tour seem like the way to go. tk did the research and we decided on #peruforless as the best option for our first ever tour-led trip. silvia worked with us to develop an 11-day tour and all we had to do was arrange our flights to and from lima. #jetblue had the schedule we wanted so the trip was on!

my name is bonita and i'm an infamous over-packer. after our last trip to Cozumel, when we had to haul too many maximum-weight bags through a mall to get to a ferry, i pledged to reform. we easily cut our total packing weight in half for this trip, and its a pleasure. we zipped through check-in and security at JFK in record speed and boarded our jet for the first leg to fort lauderdale, florida. and waited. and waited some more. pilots had to be switched out so as not to be over their hours - fine with me!

an hour later, we're on our way. we had a close connection in florida, so now we were scheduled to arrive at the time our next flight was boarding...that was stressful until we arrived and discovered we were on the plane that was continuing on to lima! #jetblue has possibly the most comfortable seats of any airlines, but the 4 choices of snack boxes gets old quickly. especially when we had the same 4 choices on the 5.5 hour flight on to lima. we ate enough cheese and crackers over the day to clog more than a few arteries.

arrival to lima was after 10pm. the expanse of city lights clinging to the coastline was spectacular. the lima airport was fairly quiet as we zipped through customs, waited a short while for bags, and out the doors. aaaand that's when the mayhem hit!

passengers, taxi drivers, people looking to find passengers, carts selling all manner of items - all seemed to be yelling at the same time. in the midst of the crush of people, i finally spot a sign with tk's name on it and we wiggle our way through to claim our ride. we had expected a driver from #peruforless and someone to greet us, but we were pleasantly surprised when we not only had two greeters, but they jumped in the van with us to go along for the 40 min ride to our hotel!

diego and nico went over our itinerary day by day, answered all the questions our exhausted brains could come up with, gave recommendations for our two 'free' days in lima, and made us feel like we were part of a family. diego's reaction when tk told him we were married had us laughing most of the trip! he assured us a lesbian couple was 'no problem' in lima, and seemed surprised we would think it might be. yay!

delivered to the door of #pullmanlimamiraflores, we quickly checked in, made it to the 7th of 16 floors, briefly considered room service, and then passed out for the most luxurious sleep. we'd be ready to start exploring the next day!