Back to Lima

2AM wakeup call and 3AM departure for our 1 hour 40 minute drive to Iquitos to catch the plane back to Lima. What was a very good trip ended on a bad note with lots of people so disappointed in this departure time. We all felt we had lost a day on the trip by arriving to the amazon on the night flight and leaving on the early flight. There are only 2 flights a day and they really should co-ordinate them together. They tried to tell us we would have more time to spend in Lima, none of us were taking this trip to spend time in Lima, so it was a disappointing end.

I think we are here too early since no one is here at all

When we arrived in Lima 5 of us walked around together, Andre and I said we would help a woman whose debit card was not working try to get that sorted out, and 2 other tagged along. I love doing things like this if you don't have other plans, we ended up in 2 different banks, and finally she was able to get some money out. Just the different ways people line up, having guys with guns in the banks, watching the locals go about their daily business, great to watch. We had loaned this woman $100.00 on the ship and she so wanted to pay us back before we left, I told her I trusted her to send us a cheque. Anyway we now have somewhere to stay if we ever go to Santa Barbara. One of the guys said he would never lend money, can you imagine being in a foreign country and not having any money! Anyway it all worked out fine, and Ingrid now has lots of money to spend on souvenirs, she is off on the second portion of the trip going to Cuzco and beyond.

From here we went to a local restaurant for lunch and ceviche, their local speciality. I am still not fantastic health wise so order pasta, but Andre has the ceviche and says it is good, the presentation is beautiful.

Back to the hotel for a nap and then the 2 of us get a taxi into town to the water fountains. This is so much fun, it is a large park with water fountains all over the place, and 2 huge ones that change their jets/spray to music and lights, it was very pretty. I think we saw 4 brides and a lot of graduates getting their pictures done, is really was pretty. The locals certainly take advantage of this spot, I don't think we saw 20 tourists while we were there, and hundreds of locals. The funniest were what we called the lawn police. There is no walking on the grass and every time someone stepped on the grass the lawn police would blow a whistle, which meant we heard lots of whistle blowing. You also walk under one of the fountains, it is a half circle/arc/tunnel that you walk through which was fun. The most fun was watching the kids in their area, they have a circle with about 60 feet diameter made up of smaller circles with spaces in between. Well the jets would go off to the time of the music and you were never sure when it would start. The middle was “safe” and you would not get wet. Lots of laughs and squeals as the jets would start and grow and stop, you would think you were safe and it would do one more squirt, we spent quite a bit of time watching this, the laughter was contagious.

We were picked up by taxi again and asked him to take us back to the old part of the city to take some pictures at night of the presidential palace square, he dropped us off and just circled around the park while we took some pictures. The area is much prettier at night than it is in the day.

Back to the hotel and we are just too tired to even think about eating, off to bed as we have another early wakeup call as we leave for the airport at 7AM.