I made it back!

I made it back from my Peru adventure Saturday afternoon. The trip home was long and tough even though each individual flight went smoothly. Mark & I got up Friday morning and checked out of our hotel in Cuzco. After having one last breakfast with friends at "The Meeting Place" cafe, we went to the airport and checked in. We flew on TACA, which years ago jokingly stood for "Take A Chance Airlines". Now, however, they fly new, very clean and professional planes. When we landed in Lima, I knew that we faced an 11 hour layover, but I wasn't worried. I have had extended layovers in Lima before and I had been introduced by my friend Matt Wilkie to LarcoMar, which is a large, three level American style mall with everything you would expect to find in a mall. We even had the taxi situation nailed because Joel, who organized our adventure called a taxi driver friend of him and had him wait for us with a sign with our names on it when we came out of the baggage claim area. We felt like VIPs when Luis, in his black suit, whisked us away from the unwashed hordes who were resigned to flagging down cabs. We even arranged for him to come back and pick us up at 8:30 that night to take us back to the airport.

We had lunch at Chili's and went to a movie, Crazy Heart (or Loco Corazone). It was in English with Spanish sub-titles. Ok, as an aside, I am accumulating too many of these stories to be funny any more. When I bought the tickets, the young lady asked me if I qualified for the senior discount. I said, "Yo tengo cinquenta y tres anos. " (Which being interpreted means, "I'm fifty freaking three years old. If that qualifies for a senior discount, then sign me up. I just hiked the Inca Trail, for pete's sake.) She just smiled and said that I owed for a full price ticket. Anyway, it served to use up more than 2 hours of our layover time. Neither of us are much in the way of shoppers, so we wandered around until we had time to eat supper and meet Luis for our return to el aeropuerto. He was there right on time and there was no tension in the cab ride, unlike many I have experienced in Peru.

When we were reunited with our luggage, which we had stored at a paid storage area at the airport, we found that our flight had been delayed from 11:55pm to 2:25am. Before it was all over, departure time was closer to 3:45am. I sacked out for an hour or so in an airport chair, but It was still rough to get around when flight time came. On the flight I just wanted to sleep, so I did that as much as I could. When we arrived in Houston, we went through passport control and customs without any problems. The only problem was that we had nearly three hours to wait for our plane to OKC, so I ended up laying on the floor in a hallway for a couple of hours while I waited. The flight to OKC was only an hour long, but I smelled bad, my teeth need brushing, I needed a good meal and a good night's sleep. All of them were waiting for me at home. After a hot shower, a meal, and good conversation with my favorite person in the world, (Carole, in case you were wondering) I enjoyed a great night's sleep. And to top it off, I got to see my church friends this morning. What a great trip!