Traveling (the process) sometimes sucks!

We dropped our dog off at my mom’s house and headed to the airport Tuesday night. The airline had instructed us to be there 3 hours before our 1:30 am flight, but we were excited, and early. Arriving at SFO at 9:30 we walked up to a non existent line at Taca Air and whipped thru the check in process. I am proud to say that our two checked bags weighed only 33 and 23 pounds! Next we were off to the security checkpoint, again, empty. So by 10 pm we were at our gate, hmmm, now what? We managed to kill the 3 1/2 hour wait by me reading, and in Grant’s case, talking to everyone who sat within a 30 foot radius of us. I did chat with a nice Aussie lady and her mom, she was a dog person who knew a bit about guide dogs in general and had been to the school I was at in Australia.

We finally boarded our plane and I had to agree with Grant’s assessment that the Airbus -A320 plane sucks. It was a full flight and we got stuck on the row before the emergency exit, which means you can’t lean your seat back. The worst part was the heat. I turned my little air vent on as high as it would go and it spit a bit of warm air on me. Uh oh, this could be bad, even though I had taken the requisite Dramamine and I had on the acupressure wristbands designed to prevent motion sickness, I was not feeling so good. Sure enough, after wallowing in misery for 3 of the 6 hours I was reaching for the air sick bag. The post sickness relief surge steadied my stomach until just as we landed in El Salvador when I had to use the bag again while we taxied to our gate, how humiliating! Once we got off the plane I immediately felt better. We only saw El Salvador from the air but it looked beautiful, lush green vegetation and sugar cane fields butting up against a beautiful relatively undeveloped shoreline. It was humid and warm.

After a short layover we boarded yet another Airbus - A320, and with some trepidation headed for our seats. Ahh, the emergency exit row! Extra legroom and seats that recline, along with cool air from the vent, we were in heaven. This 4 hour flight was opposite from the last thank goodness. I felt great, ate breakfast, read my book, had a cocktail, then slept, hooray!

We arrived in Lima around 2pm local time which is 2 hours ahead of California time. A nice guy from Adventure Travel picked us up and drove us to our hotel. Lima is like many other large South American cities, lots of cars driving fast with drivers liberally using their horns, pedestrians jaywalking, and a lack of obvious intersection controls combined with many multi lane roundabouts which always scare me not matter what country they're in. Thank goodness I didn’t have to drive!

Our hotel was in the “Miraflores” district with is south of the airport and city center near the coast. It was a nice hotel, small, but with excellent service and food. After dinner we didn’t have the energy to go out and explore so we went to bed early and slept for the next 12 hours!