Lima - Miami - Scarborough

ihana.com - big trip - diary - peru - august 2003

From Lima...

...to Felixstowe

Monday 25 - Sunday 31 August

Back in Lima we phoned Maersk Sealand to arrange shipping of the landy. A 20' container to the UK cost $1250 and we set about arranging the paperwork ourselves which was to be a nightmare. Magaly has a friend who works in customs on the part which check the incoming goods but his contacts and knowledge gave us a nudge in the right direction. We quickly realised that nobody ever arranges their shipping themselves, they get agents to do it. Ours was made more complex by Magaly bringing over a load of 101 alpaca jumpers to sell in Europe and some of her personal goods, shoes and other dorisey stuff. The landy bit was straightforward, the other stuff needed much more paperwork. Ridiculous rules such as the one where we weren't allowed into the container area, despite the fact that we had to deliver papers to an office there and be present upon the two separate openings of the container didn't help matters but we managed to literally get round them.

After two solid days of 6am to 7pm paperchases we were totally shattered. I was inside the container area with the hard-core drugs squad guys having a two-second look inside the box while M waited just inside the main entrance. The security guard near the main entrance heard on his radio that a gringo had been attacked and robbed outside the port walls while walking there from the container part. This area was blatantly dangerous, we'd driven past in a taxi earlier in the afternoon and big gangs of youths were hanging around, shirtless and with lots of scars, waiting to rob the lorries or anybody who is daft enough to walk by or unlucky enough to break down. Of course, M thought it was me who had been done over but when the guy turned up covered in blood she was glad to see it wasn't. Meanwhile I walked safely back inside the compound, bloody puddles on the ground the only evidence of the recent violence.

We got quickly into a taxi to shouts of 'look there's a gringo' and zoomed off. Callao isn't a nice place once the sun goes down, or before the sun goes down either, come to think of it!

Art deco buildings...

...only exist for a few blocks

Plenty of sad urban 4x4s

Photo shoot

Arranging flights home was a lot simpler. Due to some stupid reason it was going to cost $950 each for a one way ticket to England and $1300 for a return. A normal ticket from the UK to Peru will cost no more than $800 return but buying the same ticket from Peru is much more expensive. There was a special offer to fly to Miami, have a week in a hotel and a hire car all in for $500 and we reckoned that an onward ticket to the UK would then be about $200. Miami flight were cheap with it being probably the fantasy place to live for Latinos, god knows why.

So, we said our sad farewells to Magaly's family, new friends, cheap living, great food, and the good life and headed off on our trip to the UK. Miami was hot and sunny when we arrived, passed through the immigration farce and went to find our 'rental car'. I was offered the ability to upgrade from the free car which obviously was the smallest possible but stuck with it, despite the weird woman on the desk thinking it would be too small to even get into. Instead of the expected Smart car size it turned out to be the US equivalent of a Vectra, what civilised people would call a family car.

Our hotel was full of ancient people. They aren't really older than in England but, due to the warm weather, shuffle about in less clothes than your average pensioner, so you can see that they're all bony and covered in liver spots. Out on the streets there was, well, nobody. In true US style everybody drives, Boxsters and SUVs being the most common. There were some people walking around the shops but they tourists like us.

Miami was thoroughly underwhelming, a pointless and pretentious patch of concrete. We managed to find very cheap flights to England but had to leave a day early, what a shame.

The novelty of being back in my home town of Scarborough soon wore off, as did my sun tan. Time to look for a job. This time to save up for more trips and a life less ordinary.

Scarborough, yesterday

What's life like post trip? Check out this next page for some insights here.

 

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