Day 5, 6 and 7: Chilling and transit

Day 5 we returned to Lima from Cuzco and spent most of the day doing a lot of nothing.  =)  We tidied up the pictures, watched the Olympics, and napped.  Isn't that exciting?  Then Eric Glaser was nice enough to take us out and show us a little of Lima's nightlife.  We were very pleasantly surprised to find out that Lima has a very nice, clean, trendy and happening nightlife.   We had cocktails and munchies at Picas, a trendy club/restaurant.  They have a lot of reclaimed areas turned into shopping / club / nightlife areas.. the overall feel to me was similar to the RiverWalk in San Antonio.  It was wonderfully clean, nice, safe, trendy, and new.. but I don't think walking too many blocks in any direction outside the tourist zone would be a good idea.

After drinks & munchies we went to Lima's main gay day club, Valetodos Downtown where we were (not) surprised to hear the same exact circuit music that we hear everywhere.. except intermixed with interesting deep South American cha cha beats..  All in all we had a fabulous time even though we didn't have more than about an hour of dancing in us.  =)  Then it was back to the hotel, a little time in the Casino (where Christian won quite a few Soles!) and then to bed.

Day 6 was our transit day, but our outbound flight from Lima wasn't until 1:20 AM late that night.  Apparently, it's very normal for flights to arrive late (11 PM, etc) into Lima and depart even later (1:30 AM is considered a "reasonable hour" .. the other flights continue on into the wee'er hours...)

The JW Marriott again proved that they are a 5 star incredible place by not only allowing us a 5 PM checkout for free, but also extending our executive club access as long as necessary until we left.  This was a big deal since the Executive Lounge served 4 excellent meals a day (including wine!), had free WiFi and was just a nice place to hang out.  Hats off to them... they've made a lifetime customer out of me.

So, we checked out at 5 PM, hung out in the lounge until about 7, went shopping at the mall across the street, played a little in the hotel's casino, then met our wonderful car service folks at 8:30 PM for the trip to the airport.  I can't rave highly enough about ONElimo who did all of our car service reservations during our trip.. from the stretch limo in Long Island to sleek Mercedes services all over Peru they allowed me to pre-arrange everything and pay by credit card in advance.  Very professional, English speaking drivers were always waiting when we arrived and were overjoyed to take us where-ever we wanted to go.

Yes, we did this in ONE DAY. (Ok, we napped at LAX for 6 hours, but otherwise it was 1 day!)

So then it was back to the Lima airport for many hours.... then AeroMexico back to Mexico City then LAX.   Interestingly, they through checked our bags LIM-MEX-LAX-CAN-SYD despite being on two very different airlines all without us even asking.  This was kinda convenient because we didn't have to keep rechecking the bag but it was kinda silly because we still had to reclaim and redrop our bag at every stop.  "Customs" at each stop wanted the opportunity to inspect the bag (even though none of them actually did) before it passed on toward its next destination.  Strange.. but hey.. if we dropped the bag in Lima and it magically arrives in Sydney, I'll have to say a whole lot of nice things about AeroMexico, China Southern, and the associated airport baggage handling services.  Bags last seen in LAX and still in stable condition.  We will continue to monitor... (We have a small bet riding on whether the bags will arrive intact or not.. we'll let you know who wins!)

We had 10 hours in LAX so we got a room at the airport hotel, ordered pizza and watched True Blood then slept for 6 hours.  Now, fully refreshed, we are ready to once again depart the US and enter into leg #2 of our own personal Amazing Race.  Now it's 16 hours to Guanzhou China, then 9 hours to Sydney and phase two will begin!

Day 7 will be lost in transit (but hopefully not in translation), we we'll see you again day 8 in Sydney!

Thanks for reading!!!