What are we going to do tonight Brain ? Same thing we do every night Pinky...
There's a few things to note about being stuck in Lima again. The first is that we had both been struck down with near fatal manflu and woo-man flu respectively, we weren't well. Secondly we had already spent time in Lima, done most of the sites and attractions, been on the open top bus, been to the ruins and temples. After a month in Peru there is only so many piles of rocks you can look at, especially after the Inka trail and seeing the best of the best. So maybe we get out of Lima ? Thirdly, In Peru, as a security measure, you need your passport to do anything. To get on a bus for a day tour or to leave the city limits on any mode of transport you need to show your passports, which were now in the Brazilian embassy. The fourth is that we were rapidly running low on funds so spending money for the sake of killing a few hours isn't really an option. So next few days went -
Try and sleep in as long as possible to waste more of the day.
Walk into town for breakfast or brunch, depending on how successful the sleep in was.
Wander aimlessly around Miraflores, don't buy anything, go back to the digs.
Check status of visa
Walk into town for lunch / afternoon tea. Be back at digs for
3pm to check visa status. ( The collection window is only open from
3pm til
4pm )
No visa yet
Walk into town for dinner, eat as cheaply as possible so we can afford a jug of sangria with dinner. Go back to the digs.
Watch crappy american sitcoms on the one english channel and drink duty free rum.
Sleep, hopefully til lunchtime the next day
Repeat for ten days
As you can imagine this was boring as batshit. Our flu gradually got better but by
Thursday night we were crawling up the walls. We checked the visa status one last time before bed and finally it had been approved. There is only one flight per day to Iguazu. It leaves
at 12:10pm. The visa collection windows opens
at 3pm. If we turn up
at 8:00 asking for our passports and get them, we can make the lunchtime flight and be out of here. We packed and hoped for the best, early rise, packed bags ready to fly, off to the embassy.
To our surprise they actually let us get our passports despite being outside of the
3-4pm collection window. Finally we are on our way, run back to the hotels wifi to book our tickets aaaand nope. The flight was booked out for 2 more days. Aaaaarrrggghhhh now we have visas and still can't go to Brazil. We had a little sulk at the fact we were here for another weekend and booked flights for Sunday.
The afternoon was spent planning our onward journey. We now have 6 days in total to see Brazil. Fly to Iguazu, see the falls from the Brazilian side for a day, go to Argentina for a day to see the other side of the falls, fly to Rio, see Jesus for a photo, have a caipirinha on Copacabana beach, fly to Sao Paolo for one night and then fly to Chile to continue our journey. We can do that right ?
It's going to be a whirlwind but lets have a crack shall we ?
