We finally arrived at the hotel last night at 3:30am. The good news is that our baggage is checked in with LAN cargo and should arrive in Cajamarca before us!!!! We might be sleeping in our place tonight, who knows.
The fun began with three or four airplanes in the customs area of the Lima airport. We found our baggage belt because we saw our Action Packers immediately and started removing them from the belt. We then realized that only two of them would fit on any one cart. So here is Kerry with the mother load waiting for me to get through the line so she could skip me and push the "Magic Red" button.
I am calling it a red button because that's what it showed. This mean't that we had to take our baggage and put it through, one by one, another x-ray machine and then put it all back on the carts. (this will be a theme of the evening.). We then had to leap frog them out the door and find our driver who was a very nice older gentleman. I hired a porter to help move the APs onto a bigger cart and then we went outside and stood in the street for a while as the driver found out where Cargo City was. Once he did that we walked to he back of the airport parking lot where some young dude tried to steal one of our bags. Eagle Eye Kerry Dwyer had his number from the get go, and told him to buzz off by the car.
Again we had to move the bags, into the van. Kerry and I sat in the van while the driver, Mario, paid for parking, while sitting in the van, I tapped the dashboard and set the car alarm off. We waited, red faced, for it to turn off and then moved very little until Mario returned.
He drove us over to Cargo City and the fun began. It started with me trying to fill out a form at the window. Mario figured out that pretty much you just cut in line and start asking and doing stuff. He gave me the form and I ended up asking so many questions about it that some stranger in line was asked to fill it out for me which he happily did.
This will also be a theme. People are so nice here that they just get out of a dumb tourists/gringo's way and help or give up their place in line all together. It was crazy, everyone knew we were there and helped us all along the way.
We then had to unload the boxes from the van to a loading dock and attach the shipping stickers that read CJA for Cajamarca! I think I saw a time that read 1:00 which I think means that our boxes leave the airport at 1:00. We then thought that someone said we had to move the boxes onto a pallet, so we did, then they told us to move them onto as conveyor belt, which we did. Again, some guy took all his stuff off the belt so we could place ours on first.
Crazy Nice! We watched as our boxes appeared in the back room on a tv monitor and then some big guy called Kerry into the back room. We both went to the door and then figured out that they wanted us to wrap our suitcases in plastic. They took Kerry in for the wrapping and I was kind of not allowed in. I thougt they only wanted one person in the back high security place. After about 10 minutes of wondering and waiting I went to the door and asked if I could help my wife and he gestured sure. I took one step in and some guy was wrapping the suitcases for twenty bucks USD.
We then went and waited until someone appeared and gave us a sheet of paper and told us to go upstairs and pay. We again skipped a guy in line and had a really bad Spanish conversation and finally paid for the shipping.
We left and found out that Kerry is going to be in trouble in Lima Because it is considered a Las Vegas City. They have Casinos on almost every block as we rode for 30 minutes to the hotel which is nice. I am having breakfast after 3 hours of sleep and letting Kerry get some well needed rest. Next stop Cajamarca!!!!
I keep thinking we are on vacation.... What a surprise I will have when I figure out that I live here now!
