March 25: Day 2. The breakfast buffet that we enjoyed with
David & Linda reminded us again how different diets can be in other
countries. Along with the usual eggs, cereal, and pastries were offerings of
green, purple, and yellow tamales, glazed sweet potato, pork carnitas,
passionfruit, papaya juice and the best coffee we had tasted in the long time
(Juan Valadez is just over the border in neighboring Columbia!). Because we arrived the day before the tour actually started, we had a free day to explore the area. After
breakfast we decided to go for a walk and see if we could venture over to the
nearby Pacific Ocean beaches.
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The Pacific Ocean
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We made it to a bike and skateboard park that
overlooked the beach, but a precipitous decline down to the beach and heavy
traffic deterred us from going any further. Heading back to our hotel in the
unseasonably warm Lima weather, we decided to stop at a Burger King and get a
cold drink and a sandwich. After paying for the food, Capt. Larry realized that
he had made a mistake changing money at the airport ATM. Instead of changing
$100 US into Peruvian Sols, he got mixed up and got 100 Sols (~$25 US). So much
for those Spanish lessons he constantly works at! We returned to the hotel and
met the tour director at the hospitality desk. We had some forms that we had to
complete so we returned to our room to get our documents in order. One of those
forms was a general liability waiver relieving the tour company and its
subcontractors of any liability for any tour disruption or delay, injury,
sickness, or even death! We were a little bit uncomfortable signing it but we
had no choice. We delivered the documents and returned to our room. Because of
the warm weather, we decided that we needed to repack our suitcases to make the
warm-weather clothes we were saving for the Galapagos Islands more available.
We again had dinner with David & Linda in the hotel’s
restaurant, but experienced a little drama when we attempted to pay for our
meal. Neither of our credit cards would process the charge and we finally had
to pay with a debit card which we try not to use when traveling in order to
limit exposure to our checking account to fraudulent charges.
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Our room
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Returning to our
room, we called card services to ascertain the problem. We were told that there
were no holds on either card, but charges emanating from a “risky area” would
not be processed. The hotel is located in one of the most upscale districts of
Lima (Miraflores), but apparently all of Lima is judged to be “risky.” We found
this to be frustrating and embarrassing, especially since we had presented our
itinerary and travel dates to the bank’s credit card department prior to leaving.
Since this was the fourth time that this had happened while we were traveling
with these cards, we swore that we would have new cards when we traveled again!
Upset and tired, we turned in for the night.
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