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It felt as though we were never going to leave, I had my pijamas and dressing gown on ready to go to bed at 10pm, it was weird getting ready and going to Newport to catch the bus at this time of night! But at least the time had come to start our next adventure!
It's always a lump in the throats moment leaving the rents, but I soon shut my eyes and tried to get some shut eye as it's going to be a long ass journey! We curled up and managed to sleep for almost all of the journey on and off. We arrived in Heathrow around 3.15am - it's warmer than Pontypool here.
We strolled up to the top floor of check in, nothing was open until 4am so we just sat and stared in to thin air whilst dodging the cleaner on his cleaning machine, it you wasn't careful he would have had your toes off he wasn't messing about.. it was a bit like me in the mornings really if I had a cleaning machine, I'd run over every ones toes! We got a coffee from cafe Nero and I picked up a pain au chocolat and a chocolate twist, seens as though it was Scott's birthday thought we had best have an early morning treat!
It was finally time to say a final farewell the backpacks - it was emotional. (You never know if your going to get them back with these airlines these days!) we slipped through security, Scott being suspiciously inquisitive of the drug testing on his shoes, he needs to be careful with that he's a dodgy looking character as it is, you tell the security guy was thinking the same! Haha.
He nearly cried over the fact that Wagamamas were only doing a breakfast menu and not his usual number 24 (chilli beef ramen) we had to settle for Giraffe, a Mexican restaurant across the balcony with perfect views of Wagamamas for Scott to grizzle over, haha! Although when his Mexican breakfast tortilla came he was over the Wagamamas phase. We only had around 30 minutes to wait and it was time to board the big bird.
We were delayed by almost an hour taking off from Heathrow because of the low cloud and back log of traffic going into Madrid, this sent the nerves going a little bit as we only had 2 hours to transfer in Madrid and not only did we need to get on it but our rucksacks aswell!
We slept pretty much the entire way there and pretty sure we both missed take off due to our sleepy heads, the flight was good with little turbulence - we think! And we landed only 30 minutes after our scheduled time so we were all good, however there were a lot of people connecting and eager to get off the plane, so eager that even when we were still driving down the runway to our gate people were getting their bags from the over head carrier, not sure that made anything go any faster mind! I think the air hostess's gave up shouting at them on the tannoy after a while.
We briskly walked through the airport in search of our gate, Iberia kindly emailed and text me our gate number and time of boarding anyways. Very considerate of them! :)
We walked through airport, back through security and duty free. We had a pee and much needed face wash and off we went to stretch and queue for the next flight! We had two seats on their own next to the window on this even bigger bird, we did manage to watch a few movies and eat and drink a little but we were asleep for a good 4-5 hours of the journey each. Scott gave in at around 9 hours out of 12 and got mid air wifi (that's a thing... I know! Who knew!) it was around $5 for 10mb, spooked mum out texting them whilst flying over the amazon though! Haha. Scott wasn't having the worst of birthdays with the lovey food and unlimited drinks, however he did have a splitting headache and I had no paracetamol in my hand luggage - whoops!
We landed and went through border control fairly quickly and easy, it's always a hair raising moment waiting the be reconnected with your bags. Scott is on edge every time a bag comes out on the carousel, Despite there still being around 150 people around the carousel waiting to collect bags he was adamant that's ours had gotten lost on the plane - so negative since Alicante! Haha.
Low and behold they arrived and we welcomed them with open arms!
Onwards to find our driver with the 'G Adventures' board and to feed Scott with some paracetamol!
We found our little Peruvian man waving his board at us that said both of our names on it, he was a nice friendly little man that walked awfully quick for short legs! The heat didn't hit you like I thought it didn't take our breath away which was nice! It was just the right temperature! Not far to walk across the street where clearly Peruvians don't like pedestrians and zebra crossings mean nothing. The standard few taxi operators trying to haggle you for a ride even though they can clearly see your being marched to your car by someone. The driver needed to get his parking ticket paid for and we were off, it was like fork Knox getting out of the airport grounds and as soon as we did we hit a bunch of traffic.
Just like India the first thoughts of this place, three lanes, five rows of traffic all beeping and trying to dodge one another. Absolutely hilarious it's like being in a simulator the driver must have thought we were nuts laughing and 'whoa'ing 'ahh' 'eee' it was quite fun.
It seemed as though it took forever to get to the hotel, I'm sure he took a wrong turning, we were back and forth and round a round. Lovely looking buildings about the place though, very colourful but old and rustic looking. I keep expecting everyone to look Asian but they don't - obviously. Everyone is very short here though, it makes Scott feel like a giant! Ah bless, (finally, he's the tall one)
We eventually arrived at our hotel all in one piece, it was around 8.30pm now and we could both barely stand up with tiredness.
The hotel looked sort of strange, we were walking into a little shopping hall with the hotel on the left with flimsy windows around it. 'Hotel Gemina' looks exactly how it does on the internet. Dark furnishings and old fashion ornaments from the old vinyl record player to the wind up phones and what looked like the very first television ever made. It was quirky.
It was a quick check in and a read of our names on the Gadventures board, meeting at 6pm tomorrow which meant that we had a whole day to ourselves pretty much!
The hotel seemed very quiet, top floor (this was looking promising) room 309, the window that looked out onto a wall, shattered dreams of a room with a view this time around. We rarely get lucky with things like that!
We went across the road to the 'metro' market and got some water, tortilla chips and Mexican salsa to numb the gravings. We get safe on the streets and everyone seemed to smile at us, it seems like a friendly place... so far!
We barely ate the tortilla chips, we were so tired. We had a quick and much needed shower and popped the Spanish to on!
...We were unconscious by 9.30pm.
Welcome to Peru!
And Happy Birthday Scott, you old 28 year old man, you!
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