Yes, We’ve Done It

Yes, we’ve slept on an airport bench. The first hiccup on this trip happened when we arrived at Juliacca Airport for our flight back to Lima scheduled for 9pm. We sat and waited for the plane to come in that was to take us to Lima. Juliacca is a little place with just three planes a day and not a real flash airport. Well when one hour after departure time and we are still sitting there. Another hour later when they brought out the urn and paper cups and then a huge big plate of ham and cheese sandwiches we knew things were not looking up. Of course , we were the only english speaking passengers, so could get no information from anyone as to what was going on. All announcements over the PA System were in spanish, and we could see the mood of some of our fellow passengers was not good. Poo thought he may have to intervene in a punch up between airport officials and a couple of them. They came and told us in broken english at 11pm that they had a mechanical problem with the plane and in another hour it should arrive. So finally it arrived and at 12.20am we were able to leave Juliacca.

Now the problem was that we were to connect from Lima to Santiago with the 1.05am flight. Well with a 1hour 20 minute plane trip there was no way we were going to make that flight. And our luggage had been checked through to Santiago. So in that last hour in Juliacca I was trying to get through to them that the luggage would have to be changed to Lima and they would have to get us on the next plane out of Lima. So finally we had a seat on the 7.30 am flight which meant that we arrived in Lima at 1.45 am , checked in our luggage and had over five hours to kill.

Well, we settled in. Thank goodness for the bike chain I carry on every trip and on every trip Poo tells me that its a waste of space and extra weight. We chained up our backpacks and Poo’s camera to the seat and those Quark yellow parkas that we have carried all the way from Antarctica made good pillows It did not worry us at all, as you know my feelings on the subject, I would much rather they spend time and fix a problem with a plane than have it go down. But I will look at sleeping passengers in a different light next time I walk through an airport.

The plane took off on time and we were on our way.