One Night in Lima

Lima, Peru

Dec 17, 2023

Waking up on a grey and cloudy morning in Lima, Peru it is quiet. I am enjoying my extremely dark cup of Peruvian coffee in the cafe of the small boutique hotel I made my way to at 2am last night after arriving on the evening flight from Costa Rica. Since I travel on a vagabond budget as a teacher of English to Japanese business people I always seek out the cheapest airfares I can dig up. As the saying goes, “you get what you pay for.”

These travel experiences on a budget provide the richness of stories and memories, no matter how challenging they can sometimes be to live them in the moment. From my many years of experience in traveling in this way, I knew it was in my best interest to arrive to the airport several hours early as the website for the low-budget Latin American airline I was flying on wasn’t even functioning. It was no more reassuring to be told at the ticket counter in rapid Spanish that the flight would be delayed at least an hour due to mechanical errors.

Be that as it were, we boarded the plane into the night by way of six separate buses routing me and the other passengers to the far other side of the airport tarmac while enormous jumbo planes took off directly overhead. You really have never experienced the power and volume of a passenger plane taking off until one goes directly over your head.

Once on the plane and preparing for departure, it was a remarkable synchronicity that I just happened to be seated next to a young couple from Shanghai, a city I had traveled to some years before. It seemed we were the only non-Latinos on the flight. We stumbled our way through English and Chinese conversation late into the night.

Arriving into Lima, Peru at midnight on a Friday night after living in peaceful tranquility on a mountain surrounded by nature for over a year can be quite a jolt to the system. It conjures up images of overwhelming experiences of arriving in a place like Las Vegas, only with an endless stream of rapid Spanish permeating the senses.

It was now almost 1am and my connecting flight to Cusco was due to depart at 5am, assuming no mechanical errors. At this point, I was so delirious and exhausted that I made a decision in the moment, a skill often demanded on a daily basis by solo travelers, to book a nearby hotel for a few hours of sleep.

Little did I know that a 6 km taxi ride would take 45 minutes through a traffic-filled Friday night in a city that never sleeps. The hotel I booked on the cheap turned out to be a beautiful, small artisan hotel with a staff that went beyond the extra mile in service, including ice-cold beer delivered to my door as I was just beginning to doze off around 3am.

I have traveled to many countries and had many experiences, but never have I slept in a more comfortable bed, a California King with luxury bedding, all for the modest nightly rate of $48.

This morning I sip my coffee and I write. The sky outside is cloudy. I am told that I can walk just 10 minutes to the ocean. In Peru the beaches are known for being grey and murky. The only sounds this morning are the clanking of dishes in the kitchen behind me and a Latina woman who is loudly chewing out her boyfriend in rapid Spanish just two tables over. They are completely oblivious to me in the world.

I am now just an observer in this new movie, this foreign place where no one and nothing is familiar.

And this is how these adventures begin……

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Field Notes

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

There is no insurmountable solitude.
All paths lead to the same goal:
to convey to others what we are.
And we must pass through solitude
and difficulty, isolation and silence
in order to reach forth to the
enchanted place
where we can dance.

-Pablo Neruda

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