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The monk, the priest and kiss my cool!
To fully understand this you need to know how bad Madris Airport is and how un'helpful Iberia Staff are!! I
It was all going fine, Edinburgh to London, London to Madrid. I think it was my fault, I did say on the London to Madrid flight that It all seemed to be going very smoothly!!
So arrived in Madrid only to find we didnt have our boarding card for the next flight to Lima. So after asking Iberia staff where to go to get to the check in and get our boarding card the wild goose chase began. Firstly we only had one hour and 15 minutes between flights and secondly there were no signs for the check in and with Madrid airport being the size of a small country it just all went downhill. So with our plane leaving at 5pm and Iberia sending us on trains between terminals at 4.20 we realised that it wasnt looking good. Nightmare.
We finally found Maria, who sam aptly named our fairy god mother. She was the most helpful person in Madrid. She changed our flights till the next day and told us they would put us up in a Hotel for the night. Sounds too good to be true right... We thought so too! In the end they didnt pay for the hotel but did change the flights to a Madrid to Bogota flight then Bogota to Lima flight. Another catch 5 hour wait in Bogota. Surely it couldnt be that bad....
We thought we were doing ourselves a favour in Edinburgh when we checked the bags in and requested them to be sent straight through to Lima so we didnt need to collect them at all. Bad move, turns out (after hours of waiting to find out) that the bags were in Lima! Nightmare!
So after booking ourselves into a totally overpriced airport hotel we waited for our pick up. We soon realised that everyone waiting for this pick up had missed their flights too. This hotel will be totally cashing in on all us poor soles stuck in Madrid for the night. So we all shared our bitter stories about Iberia and headed for our hotel. They did a good job of the advertising for this hotel. From the leaflet it looked like quite an upmarket place but really it was like a Las Vegas Motel. But it was a bed and after this long day we were happy not to be in Madrid airport anymore.
So the flight to Lima was the longest flight I have been on, 9 and a half hours. The fact that we seen a monk and a priest boarding this flight together kept us amused for the first half an hour.
9.5 hours!!! Not the best really, especially when a hyper spaniard decides to take the spare seat next to us and practise his english on with the type of questions you would really only hear in a classroom. Seemed alright at first, going to Bogota from Madrid to see his girlfriend, plays in a band called Kiss my cool, never been to Scotland. But really we just wanted some peace and quiet. He left after a bit but then returned after a while with another jsut as hyper and loud spaniard and sits directly behind us in another spare seat. So no peace and quiet just loud spanish and crying babies all the way to Bogota.
Quite amazing landing in Bogota, its so high we were actually landing above clouds!! So 5 hours in Bogoat airport which is about the size of Buchanan Bus station but with less shops and no place to eat!!
We finally arrived in Lima, only a day late! We were just hoping that our bags were still there and my spanish had been understood enough to arrange a pick up from the Hostel.
All turned out fine, got to the hostel and slept like babies. Been wandering Lima today and swapping travel stories with fellow travellers at the hostel. Lima is not really what I expected, there are loads of people on the street asking for money, lots of police everywhere and a protest passing this internet cafe right now! Been to the most amazing market and got ourselves some amazing fruit, craving some vitimans after all the airline food.
So the owner of our hostel has booked our bus for tonight to Arequipa. Heading off on the 16 hour journey at 8.30 tonight. Got a nice bottle of wine at the market for pennies for to help us sleep through it!!
Jenny x x x
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