Loving and Leaving Lima

 Waking up in Tacna, Amanda and I delved into research on the best way to get out of it. We spent the morning on the phone with Jetblue, OneTravel, and everyone else we'd made arrangements with for our returning flight that was initially scheduled for May. Trying to appeal to the compassionate side of customer service, we pleaded to get out of cancellation and change fees. With little avail we squeezed an unhealthy amount out of our budgets for new return flights. Pausing for another breakfast of eggs with a side of lighter fuel, we packed up and took off for the airport. The ride to the airport took us a bit 'out of town' which is when is became clear Tacna was where the movie Holes should have been set. To say there is nothing, doesn't even explain the terrain of this town. There are boxes made of brick with one top opening that could be a window. There were barely any people and I'm afraid I'll be offensive if I call them houses because I did not see one person around these buildings within miles.
      Back at the hotel, we had tried to book flights to Lima, but the website wasn't taking non-Peruvian credit cards, so we set out to the airport in hopes of just...well, making it. When we pulled up to the airport that has maybe a maximum of three outgoing flights a day, we were nothing short of an absolute shit show. Getting to the counter, I gave him a confirmation number and told him we hadn't paid yet. Our desired flight was taking off in forty five minutes. He told us he couldn't take cash for the tickets and that we had to pay for the tickets in town, but we could perhaps take the later flight out at 5pm. With this news Amanda flashed her pearly whites and I put it all out on the table that we needed to be on the immediate flight out. Oddly enough  for this scenario, the airport which had nearly nothing in it, had a bank, which we could go pay at. He had us wait there to check with his supervisor, Carmen, if we could pay with the bank. When we looked back over at the bank, the lights were off and the one woman who'd been sitting in there was gone. The guy who'd been helping us, ran out of the airport to go get her and bribe her back from her lunch break. We thanked her and then discovered she only took cash. We scrounged up our last dollars and soles, which we only had in anticipation of paying for a Chilean visa. She gave us a receipt and we went back to the first counter and gave it to Carmen in exchange for our tickets. She then took the tickets, put on an air traffic control vest and walked out. Confused Amanda and I sat down per their request and waited as another ten minutes shuffled by. Our plane was taking off in less than fifteen minutes and we were still sitting in the lobby without tickets. We questioned where in the world Carmen, newly named San Diego, had gone and went back to the counter, where another man printed our tickets then directed us to go and open our checked bags for security. Fearful our bags wouldn't make it onto the plane, we realized all the bags for the flight were still just sitting in a pile behind the counter. We went through security after the staff became informed we were still trying to get on the flight. We ran outside and broke out into a run as we saw they were about to wheel away the stairs to get onto the plane. Hysterically laughing while carrying all the things we couldn't fit into backpacks, we ran up the stairs and onto the plane where everyone stared at us like the idiots we were. We crashed into our seats trying to regain our breath. The plane was huge for a one hour flight and near us, in the very back, it was almost empty. An hour later we arrived in Lima with no plan other than to leave the next night.
      Last time we were in Lima we stayed near the airport because we had a 6AM flight. After the fact, everyone told us how lucky we were not to have been murdered for staying in that area. This time around we decided to stay in the nicer part of town, Miraflores. We did our best to find two things we desperately needed; wifi and icecream. We settled on gelato and a data plan and started researching decent hotels in the area. I told Amanda at this point we were no longer traveling. The trip had been unfortunately cut short, but I was going to take advantage of the situation. We were now on vacation and I wanted a pool. The difference between traveling and vacationing is about five stars. With some back up help from Amanda's boyfriend overseas, he booked a room for us at the hotel we were looking at through a terrible poor internet connection.
     We then left the airport in search for a taxi driver that wouldn't charge an obscene amount or kidnap us. Negotiating the price down, we got a guy to take us that didn't distinctly seem like a serial killer, though he was definitely confused when with forty pound backpacks we requested to be taken to a five star hotel. We told him about having just been in the earthquake region, trying to get into Chile and how we were leaving the next day and he offered to pick us up the following evening.
    When we arrived at the hotel, the receptionist tried to tell us she didn't have a reservation, but Amanda gave them her confirmation number and they showed us to a room, right next to their construction zone. Ageism people...it's real. We were the only people in the hotel that were under sixty. No, sixty for the white people, forty for the South Americans. A very pleasant ( and friendly) concierge named Steve showed us to our room, where we screamed and jumped on the bed like every kid that goes to a hotel in a Disney movie. The room was huge with a big bathroom and a kitchenette. And most importantly a rooftop pool.
   

            We showered and got ready for what we anticipated to be a big night on the town. After over feeding ourselves with delicious seafood, we downed a few Pisco Sours and decided we were too full to carry on anything else. Steve, however, had different plans for us when he called inviting us to a bar at ten pm. We kindly took his suggestion and then fell asleep.

       The next day we spent the morning at the pool. Cusco was a dangerous place to tan. You burnt in less than ten minutes and then it started raining. We laid out reading and journaling for a few hours and then got dressed for a delicious three course lunch the hotel was offering. We returned to our rooms, packed our bags, checked out and went shopping for the next few hours. We came back to the hotel for our bags and another Pisco Sour or too before heading off to the airport. Everything at the airport went smoothly and we ended up next to a very pleasant Peruvian Born firefighter from Georgia. For some reason the flight was nearly impossible to sleep on and we arrived in Fort Lauderdale, feeling groggy and disgusting. We both were flying to Georgia for our last leg of the trip home and honestly the whole thing seemed surreal. Particularly when we were scowled upon for searching for mimosas at 7:30 AM. When we landed Amanda only had a twenty minute connection so we said a very rushed goodbye and set off for our next gate, where we again departed for our so called homes.

        I've 'come home' a lot of times, with different emotions each time. I've felt ready, devastated, and excited, but this was the closest to nothing I've ever felt. It's obvious neither of us wanted to go home, but it didn't feel like this was a choice we were making. It felt like like the right thing to do on one hand, but on the other it just seemed like the course we were to follow, whether we liked it or not, it just seemed....written.