Friday 11 May 2012
An addendum to yesterday.
After we got to the hotel, we walked into town and to the Hotel Gloria, where we stayed with our tour. The clothes that we left in Lima (on 18 April) had finally arrived La Paz and we went and picked them up yesterday afternoon. The Albatross got Quebec back.
Dinner last night was at a Japanese restaurant around the corner. Yes, probably the wrong thing to eat in our last night in South America. However it was really good Japanese food and it was without cheese.
The squirrels roamed around The Albatross’ head for quite a long time last night. One of them went to sleep during dinner and the other when we got into bed.
Squirrels, think of the squirrel in Ice Age.
Our flight to Lima today was at 2pm, but as we had nothing to do we went straight to the airport. This was a good thing as it took us 1.5 hour, instead of 45 minutes, to get there. There were blockades in town so we went the up to the high plains instead of through town. But then we got caught in the markets and sat in the taxi without moving for about 20 minutes. Our driver was getting quite stressed at this stage, despite our assurances that it was ok. Finally we made it.
When we went through immigration our carry-on bags got searched. A full on search, the lady took everything out and examined and opened everything, then it got put through the scanner.
The flight to Lima was uneventful, the service on LAN was dismissive and ordinary.
In Lima we had about 1.5 hour wait for our connecting flight and our departure gate was at the other end of the airport. All we wanted was a sit and a beer. When we finally got one, they disrupted that by calling us up to the counter, looking at our boarding pass and deciding all was ok. We just wanted to relax before hoping on a plane for 11 hours.
We survived the long haul flight to Madrid. It took half an hour and a shuttle train to another terminal to find our gate for our next connecting flight. This flight was short, just 2 hours. Up the east coast of France and across the English Channel.
London! Our final destination.
Clearing immigration took a little while whilst we had to convince the officer that we had enough money and were going to leave London. Coming in without anything booked and no ticket out of the country didn’t go down well. He let us through.
In a cab and off to Richmond to visit Hamish and Sue. Yah!
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