We arrived in Lima late last night, after another long flight, or two, actually. And yesterday, although excited for this trip, my mind was plagued with thoughts of paranoid superstition. Namely, the issue most domininant was the date, the 17th, and that we flew flight #174. A double 17. I have tried to ignore my seventeenth omen and carry on with daily activities and not take note of this annoying little number that keeps popping up in my life. However, his past week, two of my work colleagues had experienced the aftermath of a tragic explosion at the hotel they were staying in in Mexico. Of course, they made it out, physically unscathed, but rather rocked emotionally and psychologically i’m sure.

In the car on the way to the airport, a tune played on the radio, reminding me of something slightly morbid. Somewhere over the rainbow, but not the original version. A song from the sad end of a movie, I don’t recall which one. Then we’re driving and I look over to see the licence plate of one of maybe 2 dozen cars on the road; his licence plate says “lastday”. Awesome.

Anyway, our first flight was delayed a bit, and so we ended up running for our second flight, which was scheduled to board while we were still up in the air. Second flight was long, since we barely stretched our legs to run to the other terminal (176 if you want to know). I watched 4 movies in total, was fed a crappy Air Canada meal with mystery fruit, no maybe, veggy salad; still not sure, but there were peas in it, followed by a snack of the smallest bun you’ve ever seen nearly 6 hours later.

A humorous event as the plane landed in Lima. It was dark outside, and someone a couple seats ahead wasn’t watching our decent (neither was I). All of a sudden there was a small lurch and she screamed out, and the entire plane brokeout in giggles because we had just touched the run way quite lightly and gracefully.

We had a driver meet us from the hotel to take us from the airport. He was amusing. He had a sign that read “Withell Bawn Yoselin” so we figured it was us. We tried to follow him as he disappeared into the crowd. Black leather jacket, pointy euro-shoes. We get to the parking lot, and he’s lost the car. Not sure where it is. He doesn’t speak great english, so i try to ask in spanish the color or make of the car. He doesn’t understand me, of course. The spanish here is a bit different somehow than Mexico. We find it finally, and put our bags into the trunk of his mitsubishi hatch, right beside the whopping sub, that pounded english hits I could feel in my chest all the way to the hotel. It was a small hotel,with character, most lovely except for the 10 threat count sheets, sweaty sock smell and dirty carpet. It was otherwise clean, the shower was luke warm, and the bed was soft. To sleep we went.

From what we saw from the drive back to the airport this morning, Lima is a nice combination Spanish town and Bucerias mainstreet. It’s fairly well developed with some  nice new stores, some industrial type streets, but overall much cleaner than Mexico. There is some spanish style to the architechture, and there are some neat little walk ways and grassy boulevards where people stroll with there well balanced dogs.