The long 12.5hr flight from London to Lima, Peru was tedious, it was a case of sitting in the wee bucket seat and entertaining myself by which ever means. I was on an old plane that I hoped had an engine in a better condition than the cabin. There was no USB port, there was next to no padding on the seat, the screen was no bigger than 4 inches with an extremely limited choice of entertainment and the earphones were the cheapest I’ve seen in years – this airline was on a serious cost saving budget ✈️

I had the usual nerves at Lima airport trying to pick out the one person that should be there to meet me – the friendly pre arranged taxi driver . Behind the sliding doors that opened like stage curtains was mayhem. There in front of me was a sea of people waiting to meet and greet the new arrivals. The noise was deafening as taxi drivers were shouting out names waving their pre printed cards and others were desperately touting for business, trying to make eye contact with anyone they suspected had a mere hint of uncertainty.

I began frantically and blindly scanning the over crowded hall looking for my beacon of hope and then I spotted him standing quietly amongst the crowd holding an A4 sheet of paper with my name typed in bold black letters. It was such a huge relief – I was no longer alone in this new (foreboding) foreign city.

The few words of Spanish I had learned over the last few weeks were useless, I couldn’t understand a word. I knew no Spanish and he knew no English. It was going to be a long silent taxi ride in the dark.

But then I remembered, I had a conversation converter app on my phone and by sheer luck he had too. I spoke into my hand-held device in English and it spoke back in Spanish and he did the same in reverse – eureka! The amazing technology of the modern world. We (Freddie and me) had a fabulous 40 minute non stop conversation all the way to my hotel and as amazing as it sounds, he used to work in the rainforest ridding the area of the poachers and animal traffickers! OMGoodness – what wonderful conversation we had!!

30th Sept am

Hopped on the hop-on, hop-off bus for a tour of Lima, an amazing city with such diverse culture. Hopped off at the cathedral wow….just wow (photo)

Back at the city centre, I hopped off the Hop-on hope-off bus, slipped into the nearest cafe and pointed to one of the items in the menu. 15 minutes later a delicious pizza arrived and I unashamedly stuffed it into my appreciative face. Bloated, I waddled back to the hotel to collect the taxi to the airport to catch the plane for an hours journey to Pucallpa. Another ‘spot my driver’ in the maddening crowd to be endured.