July 14-16

And then finally, after more than two years of planning, starting, stopping, starting, and stopping, we found ourselves getting ready to fly to Peru for a two-week tour with Intrepid, the folks that took us to the Nile River in Egypt in 2019.  We’d booked the Premium Peru In Depth tour, which would hit the major highlights of this stunningly beautiful country. 

But how did we get to this tour and this time?  Funny you should ask.  Originally, along with Kim and Marty, we booked the one-week version for January of 2022, also adding some days on at the start to fly into Santiago, Chile to spend a week in that region and visit Patagonia.  But by late November of 2021 Covid was resurging and travel restrictions in both Chile and Peru convinced us to punt and delay the trip for a year.  Intrepid allows you to cancel within the proper time requirements without any penalty and apply your deposit to a future trip, which we planned to do. 

In July of 2022, we decided to dip our toes again and this time, added a second tour, the Galapagos Explorer: Southern Islands (Grand Queen Beatriz) with Intrepid, to follow our time in Peru and Chile to take place again in January 2023.  At that time, I felt confident that I would have fully recovered from the knee replacement I underwent that month and so we looked forward to what would be grand adventure, introducing us to three distinct areas in South America. 

Fast forward to October and I begin to feel discomfort in my right hip and at first thought it was a groin muscle issue.  I’m still in physical therapy for the knee and we switch treatment over to trying to address that issue, but it doesn’t seem to improve and in fact, the pain increases.  In the middle of the month, we are in Grants Pass and during a follow up Zoom meeting with my surgeon, I mention the groin issue and he says that given the amount of arthritis I had in my knee, his call is that it is the problem with my hip.  And sure enough, an Xray soon after confirms that diagnosis. 

I wouldn’t be able to schedule hip replacement surgery before our planned January trip, so I got a cortisone injection which did provide significant relief, but one I wasn’t confident would last for the full three months to get me through the trip.  And so, we made the difficult decision to cancel both trips and plan for a return later in 2023.  As an aside, Kim and Marty would take the trip and be informed one week before the start of the Peru portion, that due to the political crisis that overtook all of Peru, their tour of that country was cancelled.  They quickly booked a replacement tour in Ecuador with another company and made lemonade out of lemons. 

So now, after starting and stopping and starting and stopping, we were ready to fly overnight to Peru.  The tour was scheduled to start in the late afternoon of Sunday, July 16^th and to make sure we allowed for travel disruptions, we booked our flight for Friday the 14^th so we could arrive in Lima Saturday morning, very early at 5am  As we would be spending Sunday night with the tour at the Pullman Lima Miraflores, we reserved Friday and Saturday night there, enabling us to have a room to check into when we arrived from the airport way before we could have nabbed a room with just a Saturday occupancy. 

Our flight to Atlanta, where we would connect for the one to Lima at 11:55pm, was scheduled to depart at 2:45pm, so we planned to be all packed and go to breakfast at Maxine’s, our long time (since the 1970’s) breakfast joint on Washington Blvd a block behind our alma mater, Venice High School.  We were killing a little time before heading to eat when I got an email from Delta that our flight that afternoon had been cancelled and they had rebooked us on a later one.  This quick resolution of the cancelled flight was appreciated except, and this is a very big except, we would arrive in Atlanta after our flight for Lima had departed. 

Without much hope of a better outcome, I called the Delta line and was informed by their robot that it was a 40-minute wait for a live agent.  What did I have to lose by waiting was my thought and so with phone on speaker mode, began to fiddle with the laptop killing time as the minutes began to pass by.  Imagine my surprise, and delight, when an agent came on the line less than five minutes later and asked if they could assist me. 

And long story short, after checking out options, he asked how close we were to the airport.  When I responded less than thirty minutes and that we were all packed, he said I’ve got good news and bad news, which do you want first?  He gave us both at the same time saying that we got the last two seats on a flight leaving in less than two hours, but they weren’t together and before I could say anything, he stated that they were in First Class. 

Book it I said and then we scrambled, quickly calling a taxi, stashing last minute items in the bags, locking up the house and as we would discover upon our return two weeks later, leaving a few chores uncompleted (a few dirty dishes, half full trash can, etc.).  But make it to the airport we did where we couldn’t get checked in at the kiosk, instead having to wait in line for the single agent handling that task. 

Time seemed to speed by as we stood there until we were in front of him and it all went smoothly until he said he was too late to check our bags, which we were going to have to do as we had items that wouldn’t clear TSA.  He went back to his keyboard and after some clicking determined that he could get them on as priority and our last hurdle was cleared.  We made it through TSA and hustled to the gate to find boarding had already commenced and utilizing our newly minted status as first-class passengers, we were soon ushered to our separate seats. 

I’d no sooner sat in my assigned seat when a gentleman approached me and asked if I wanted to switch seats with him in order to sit next to Joanna.  The final domino having fallen into place, I soon found myself, Woodford Reserve on the rocks at my side, ready to take off.  The upgrade to first class was a life saver though as we’d not been able to eat that morning as intended and late arrival in Atlanta meant no handy food options, so the meal service we got on that first flight saved the day.  And that would wrap up an exciting start to what would be a great couple of weeks of travel. 

Links

Intrepid Premium Peru: https://www.intrepidtravel.com/us/peru/premium-peru-depth-143499

Peru Political Unrest: https://www.vox.com/23576393/peru-political-crisis-castillo-boluarte-elections-congress

Pullman Lima Miraflores: https://all.accor.com/hotel/B464/index.en.shtml?utm_campaign=seo+maps&utm_medium=seo+maps&utm_source=google+Maps