Peru 2012 Day 13

Still being sick I woke up very late for me. I really did not feel well in the morning so I just stayed in bed until about 9:30. Typically I wake up at about 5:30 so this was fairly unique for me. I got cleaned up and packed and by 10:30 I was downstairs to check out of the hotel. I left my main suitcase in the hotel storage and carried my backpack around for the day.  I started off the morning by going around the local tourist shops in search of magnets and other knicknacks until around 11:30 or so. This meant I walked up towards Larcomar but did not go all the way to it.  When I was done I sat in the park with the cats on a bench basically in front of the McDOnald's.  Daniela was supposed to meet me at noon but I was sweating profusely even though the weather was overcast and perhaps a little cool. I suspect this was due to being ill. While I was waiting Luis called me and said he was coming by to give a gift from the company to me. I told him where I was and a few minutes later he arrived and gave me a gift of shot glasses with depictions of the Nazca lines on them. That is one of the attractions in Lima I still have not seen. I accepted the gift and he and his wife were on their way to a church thing.  It was after all a holiday.

After that I moved more to the center of the park to wait for Daniela. She was about a half an hour late and apologized profusely. She explained she was helping her brother with a trip she had booked for him before she left and lost track of time. I teased her about being used to Peruvian time via Luis.  I had to explain to her that I was not feeling well for the past day or so and that our plans of possibly getting sushi were out the window.  She said ok and suggested perhaps pasta. I agreed to that. I figured I could find something bland, cheesy and binding in a pasta menu.  We walked a fair distance out from the hotel into San Isidro district. The restaurant was named Danica.  She had apparently worked there for a month or so some time before.  I ordered a water (I know, very sad) and a gnocchi cuarto quesos (with 4 cheeses).  I figured that would be safest for the situation.  She ordered a Thai pasta because she had her heart somewhat set on Asian food.  The food was fairly good though perhaps mine was a touch salty which is to be expected with all the cheese I guess.  In any event I enjoyed it and ate the whole plate hoping it didn't come back to ruin me.  We chatted throughout lunch and after we were done and settled up we walked deeper into San Isidro where we went to the Olive Park which is filled with olive trees. We saw this on the first tour on Saturday and I was disappointed we didn't get to get out of the bus to take some pictures. I had mentioned that just as we left the restaurant so she took me there. It was not very far from the restaurant at all. We walked through the whole park. It is a very expensive area of Lima. The houses are old and very large.  The park is supposed to be more than 400 years old. They harvest the olives each year and process them and dispense them to the residents of the district based on how good a harvest it is. It might be one amount per person or one amount per household if the harvest is bad. We had seen them harvesting when we were on the tour.  I should mention we also saw Huaca Pucllana while we were walking. I was surprised at how close that really was to the hotel as well though  we didn't go back to it.  We also found a small ice cream stand she knew in the area and each got some ice cream. She really likes ice creams with alcohol in them. I think I mentioned she loves desserts in general before. So we got some ice creams with alcohol in them. I would have to look at the picture to get the name for mine. It was actually quite good. She went on to tell me about all the alcohol flavored ice creams she had tried including a pisco sour flavor her aunt in the highlands makes.  We walked back to the park to sit down and eat the ice creams before we started back towards Miraflores.  We took a slightly different route than we had taken before and it was basically a straight show to the El Parque del Amor that we saw on the bus tour. We decided to settle there and just talked as the sun set (which was sort of a sad thing as the heavy overcast prevented it from being anything but a gradual darkening. I had already told her about my ability to bring sun with me when I travel and I had to explain that I failed today probably because I was sick. She accepted that.  WHile we were talking an elderly woman fell down the stairs where we were setting and hit her head and started bleed. Daniela sprung into action and found a park security guard and called an ambulance. Fortunately the woman didn't appear to be too badly hurt after all but it was still sort of scary. She appeared to be going to a church group meeting in the park or something like that and before an ambulanced arrived she had moved down to be with the group. I couldn't understand anything that was being said but at least she seemed to be ok enough. We didn't get to find out when the ambulance arrived because it became time for me to head to the hotel to get my stuff and be brought to the airport by Luis. After she dropped me off we parted ways. She was to go to a friend's in Miraflores before she went home since she was already in the area.  It was a very nice day and I really enjoyed it. I am glad she came all the way to Miraflores for me.

Amusingly, Luis was actually early for what time he said he was going to pick me up by about half an hour and I was exactly on time instead. He had to do donuts around the block while waiting for me. I got in and got my bag and packed the shot glasses into it when he came around and I loaded up and it was off to the airport. The ride was very easy because there was no traffic at all with it being a holiday and we were there in less than half an hour. The check-in desks didn't open up for another 15 minutes but because I was a premier passenger I didn't have to wait very long after that to get checked in. Luis waited for me and we had a tea before he left me to head back to pick up his wife and I to go through security and wait for the plane.  The security check was fairly easy. They had an immigration check as well which I survived easily because I retained the bottom form from my initial entry with my passport. It appeared a few Americans forgot to do this and had to go through a secondary line.  I did a little bit of knicknack shopping in the airport then headed towards the gate.  The posted boarding time was 9:00 which seemed very early for a 10:38 flight and it indeed was because they didn't actually start boarding until 9:38.  Every single carry-on bag was inspected before boarding the plane but being premier again helped me get through and on pretty quickly.

The plane was a 757-200 The flight itself was probably ok. There were few bumps but the Peruvian woman next to me was the type that believes her seat extends 7 inches beyond her armrests and I had to maintain an uncomfortable defensive position with my arm to keep her from sticking her elbow into my side. This is the single biggest pet peeve I have on flights and I was fortunately able to maintain balance with this one because she didn't keep pushing. I just couldn't move my arm or she would take the space immediately. I didn't eat anything except a roll for the full meal.  I watched a Japanese film called the Train Brain Express which as a buddy film comedy about two guys who are big train nuts and how their lives intesect and their hobby intersects with their jobs. It was a strange movie and the two rastafarians that worked with one of the guys were very funny. After that I tried to sleep and maybe got about 4 or 5 hours of intermittent and uncomfortable sleep.  After that I basically just watched the flight map for the rest of the flight. They served a muffin and I had some coffee with that before we landed.  We were in that wierd seat in the plane that one of the windows is missing, presumably where there had been a different transition area when the plane was in a different configuration. It made it tough to see the take off and landing, which I like to see but I got a few glimpses of both but better of the landing.

I realize now why people dislike Newark's airport. While it was inocuous going out of the country it was fairly miserable getting back in. I did manage to get through the immigration line fairly quickly because I got off the plane fast but then I had to wait for my luggage to come through. A bag got stuck on the carousel two bags before mine so I had to wait even longer. After about 5 minutes they freed it and I was able to get mine and then came the miserable part. Customs inspected every single bag that came through. You were better off being a group because they sent them through the agricultural inspection which got them through much faster. Being an individual you really got punished.  After having everything pulled out of my bags and then having to put it back I was able to get through and recheck my bag for the final flight and then head over to the gate. It took around an hour from landing to getting to the gate.  Not really fun at all. If I had had the chance for my Global Entry interview before this trip I would have been able to avoid most of that. Unfortunately that is this upcoming Friday instead.  When I found a seat at the gate I started typing up this to kill the time before we actually were able to board. At least I didn't have to change terminals during the process.

The flight was on a Bombadier Dash 8 Q-400 which is a small turboprop plane. I was at the very last seat in the plane (so much for Premier status I guess, well I did got on in the premier groups but still, I must have booked the last seat, it was a window seat).  Even though the weather was warm and didn't feel to breezey in Newark the takeoff was quite interesting as the plane made some funny feeling bounces while we ascended and turned. It probably felt worse because I was at the back of the plane. After we got up to altitude (which was not high at all) I sort of looked out the window and I think nodded off until they anounced we were approaching for landing.  The Spanish girl next to me went white knuckled on the armrests as we wobbled our way into the landing. It was definitely much windier in Boston.  We landed safely though it was obvious that the wheels did not all touch at the same time.  The flight attendant in the back of the plane lost her book during the landing and the passengers had to hand it back to her after we touched down.

From there it was a small wait to get off the plane since it was so tiny and then on to the baggage carousel. I was fairly early in the baggage roulette and got outside and called to find my Dad was just a few minutes away to pick me up. There was a bit of traffic but we were able to avoid most of it and I arrived at home tired and feeling rancid from the lack of shower and properly sleep.  All the same it was no time for bed.

All in all it was a good trip in Peru. It was trying at times with the class and Lima traffic will definitely take years off your life if you pay attention to it but I think the general experience was positive and the students and their coworkers were happy with the training.  I think the best part was meeting Daniela because I like meeting genuine and interesting people when I travel and she is definitely both of those.  I am happy to be home at least for being able to drink water out of the tap again, but I will miss Peru a bit.

The pictures from today are located here (all pre-flight).

Peru 2012 Day 12

I guess Wednesdays in Lima are bad days for me because as I recall it was last Wednesday I had stomach problems and they resurfaced overnight before today.  I ended up spending a fair portion of the night in the bathroom and I felt like hell whether I was able to sleep or not. I am not one who typically gets sick so this is all very strange to me.  Not very happy with it I didn't really manage to get much sleep and I think I may have had a fever or something like that because I was cold and my eyes were burning all night and into the day.  I really didn't want to take a shower when I had to but of course I did. I went downstairs a bit later than I typically would but of course Luis was even later than normal so I stood outside with my very heavy backpack weighing down on me for nearly 40 minutes I think.  When Luis picked me up I told him I would need some medicine for my stomach. He drove me to the office then went out to get me some stomach and flu drugs. He thinks it is a flu because of the headache and maybe fever.  It could be food related. I am not sure really.

We started class and I had a hard time getting out of my chair at times because I felt wobbly.  Unfortunately this material is among the most boring that the class has to offer and on top of it neither Luis nor Cesar was there to translate if needed for the first bit of it. I have to admit I had little motivation to complete out the day the way I felt and was immediately thinking of nothing more than going back to the hotel room and getting back in bed.  I had to worry about being mostly healthy for Daniela on Friday as well so I would have preferred to not kill myself today.  All the same, the class was why I was here so it came first. Luis brought me some tea and some pills that could have been the brown acid for all I could tell by look. The names meant nothing to me but he assured me they were what I needed so being a trusting fool I took them. My main hopes were that they would keep me out of the bathroom. I am fairly certain I got cleaned out completely throughout the night before but drinking water could cause me to have to deal with it even.  It certainly felt like that might be happening.  In fact it did happen as I got lucky that Luis went out and bought some toilet paper while we were working and I ended up having to duck into the bagno and find that somehow there was still more inside me than I thought possible.  In any event the bathroom isn't the cleanest but it is by no means scary so I had no choice but to use it. We went through till lunch time then I was taken back to my hotel to rest for an hour or so because of how I felt rather than being taken to lunch. There is no way I could eat anything anyway.  After Luis picked me up from the hotel we headed straight back to the office and finished out the remaining bit of class they had.  I did try to have some soda crackers and water though I was afraid to move to upset any balances.

Oh by the way the people who clean my room apparently managed to break the flusher handle on my toilet during the past couple days. I know I used it a lot last night but it was broken on Tuesday when I got back really late. It was then broken further on Wednesday when I got back to the hotel from the office.

We finished up later than I would  have preferred and I packed up and said goodbye to the students and Cesar took me back to the hotel. I took a few minutes to get settled and then it was basically right to bed.

No lunch. No dinner. Basically just a picture of the broken toilet today.

Peru 2012 Day 11

Today they wanted to start later because Cesar, Luis, Hubert and myself had a very late night so would be tired. I didn't mind that so much even though I typically wake up at the same time anyway.  It meant at least I could relax for a little bit longer before I had to put my nose to the grindstone and today was some of the more tedious stuff for the students to learn.  I got downstairs at the required time but waited much longer than even the worst I had waited before these two weeks. When Luis arrived to pick me up he told me that he was getting ready to go when he fell asleep on the couch for a few extra minutes.  He apologized profusely but it was ok by me.  At the office we started basically right away as all the students were there and I of course arrived late.  We set right to it and our work carried us straight till lunch time. The students apparently had to go buy new uniform clothes for some pictures to be taken on Thursday so they might be a little bit long in coming back. Luis had to pick up his daughter from school before he took me out then we had to drop her off at his home before he took me to the same mall we ate at Pizza Hut before and this time we ate at a Longhorn. I will say it had the same logos and such but it did not remind me of the Longhorns I've been to in the US at all. I ordered a coca cola and lomo fino with spaghetti al pesto.  Luis also ordered an appetizer of salmon carpaccio.  Everything was very good but between the pasta and the beef (lomo fino is basically something similar to a beef tenderloin I think) I got filled up very fast and didn't really finish.  The prices there were among the highest I have seen for food in Lima.  I cannot say I am surprised with the fact they serve US beef as well as local (I assume Argentinian) beef.  The US beef was very expensive. While we ate we got to watch the first half of the Spain and Portugal Euro Cup match.  It was very bad as neither team played well in my opinion. Especially Espana.

After lunch it was back to the office. The students were supposed to show up about 15 minutes after us but it was more like an hour and 15 minutes.  I was not thrilled with this obviously but there was little I could do. In my opinion Luis had added downtime basically every day for the students making them wait for me to return from lunch so I can't really say much about it honestly.  We started in as soon as they all returned and worked until almost 6pm with what we needed to finish for the day. From there Luis had already left for a meeting so Cesar took me via cab back to the hotel.

After settling in for a few minutes I decided to try to call Daniela as she had given me her number on the weekend.  We chatted for a few minutes and set up a meeting on Friday to have lunch before I go. Friday, as I mentioned is a holiday here so she has the day off from work but she was willing to take a ride to Miraflores to meet up with me. I think we are going to have sushi so I can teach her something about it.  We have to meet in, "the park with the cats."

After the call I basically headed out the door to Larcomar and ate for a third time at Cafe Cafe. Having liked their food the most of all the places around Miraflores I've tried I decided I may as well stay with a good thing.  This time I ordered a Cuscena and the chicken Maryland which is a breaded chicken with cream corn (our style not Peruvian style) and bacon on it.  That came with a large dose of french fries too.  It was good but I think I was a bit more full from lunch than I expected to be and didn't end up finishing it.  There was a lot there, especially the fries. There were also two fried plantains but I stayed away from those because I went to the doctor a couple weeks before I left and was told my potassium was high.  Better to be safe than sorry. After dinner it was back to the hotel to make an early night of it.  Tuesday was a very long day and I need the rest from it still. Small piece of irony that I hadn't yet mentioned. The two longest days of my stay here were Sunday with all the tours and Tuesday with the class then work on a local site.  In both occasions my neighbors woke me up at 2:30am by noisily have fun (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, this is a family blog after all).  With an already short night each night and a need to be up in the morning for work I was not really thrilled with either event. At least they were very quick both times (not romantic really I guess).

The pictures of today's food are located here.

Peru 2012 Day 10

Today I got ready and headed downstairs and was only there a couple minutes when Luis called me to say that he was stuck in traffic and would be 15 minutes late. In Luis time this really means about 25 minutes late. I headed back into the room for a couple minutes then came back downstairs and waited in the lobby for a while. A tour bus filled with Japanese tourists led by a Chinese looking woman with a very loud voice and a heavy Russian accent speaking English arrived and started arguing with the hotel that they were supposed to have reservations there. Meanwhile the hotel had no record of them. It got a bit noisy inside with the Russian sounding woman so I headed back outside to wait and as I guessed Luis was about 25 minutes late. As soon as I got in the car I asked Luis to call the students and have them start working on the labs that they were supposed to be doing so we could save some time. It took us about a half an hour to get to the office and just as I suspected, even though they said they would start they did absolutely nothing in the dead time before my arrival.  I can't say I was disappointed, just a bit annoyed at the obvious.

They got started a couple minutes after I got in and worked their way through what they needed to do before I started the next section. This unfortunately was running later than I wanted. The next session also ran into its issues which I guess is to be expected. We broke for lunch rather later for the class to get as far as we could.  Luis took me to a restaurant in the San Borja district which is where the office is as well. It was a very short drive to the place. It was called Embarcadero 41 (I assume Pier 41).  The specialty is seafood.  He ordered us a mixture of tiradito for starter. Tiradito is like ceviche except it uses specific chili sauces (not spicy, unfortunately, probably more means pepper than chili). One is orange and one is yellow. The orange one is a bit spicier. The dish also had a nice pile of marinated octopus which was very tasty. For snack as we got there the waiter gave us some corn that is like popcorn but the shells are not thick enough for it to burst outward.  It tastes just like popcorn. I like it because the shells do not get stuck in your teeth.  For my lunch I ordered a swordfish tacu tacu.  Tacu tacu is a specific local type sauce that is often used with beef tripe I think but in this case it was served with the fish. It was accompanied with potatoes and rice. I find it strange to get both together so often down here. In the US it is either one or the other. Never both. I just had a coca cola to drink with the meal.

After lunch it was back to the office to finish up the few bits of what we had to do and then to start on the next subject to try to get a bit ahead of schedule which basically we were able to do without issue.  When we were done with the work I had to take a taxi with some of the students to the old office to meet up with Luis who was doing some contract paperwork to get sent out then we would head pretty much right back across the street from the new office to install an upgrade to a site. I was already prepared for it to be a long day.  The old office was rather amusing in that it (like the new office) was obviously a repurposed house.  The office Luis was in and therefore I ended up in for the short time I was there was a kitchen where they had removed the range but not the over the stove fan.  Repurposed but not really remodeled.  We were there maybe for half an hour to 45 minutes.  Then Luis, Hubert and myself packed into Luis' car and headed over to the site. We got going as soon as we could when we got in pretty much went nonstop until we were done. I would say we got there at 6:30 or so. We ended up leaving at 11:15. This involved performing 2 upgrades and all the necessary calibrations. Everything basically went really well until we discovered an issue at the very end. It was a relatively bad issue but we formed a solution for it before calling it a night.

With no traffic on the roads it was fast back to the hotel and I got into the room at about 11:30 or so. Amazing how different driving around Lima is when all the cars are parked somewhere.  I didn't manage a dinner of any sort today.  It was a very long day.

The couple pictures of food are located here.

Peru 2012 Day 9

Luis was surprisingly close to on time today but the traffic getting to the office was very bad. I was not surprised at this, it being a Monday. All the same we still got to the office reasonably on time by taking yet another completely different route there.  Some of the students were not on time but we waited a little bit before getting started. They had to continue with where we left off on Friday so it was pretty much get set and go.  We did start off without a couple of the students arriving yet but they caught up pretty quick. Luis had to go to the dentist so left right after dropping me off. Cesar came in a few minutes after that to help out the class with translations and questions. Completing what we had not yet finished carried us through to lunch time.

Luis took me to Pardos Chicken down by the beach in Barranco for lunch. They are a grilled chicken chain that I have seen in quite a few places around the city. He chose the beach I am sure for the nice air and view. He ordered us appetizers of beef heart and chicken skewers which came with fried yellow potatoes and small cobs of the local white corn with its giant kernels. I also ordered my first every Inca Cola which used to be the national drink of Peru before it was bought by a Chilean company (or so Luis says). It was sweet and had a strange flavor sort of like bubble gum. It is yellow and not at all flavored like we would think cola is. We swapped one skewer each. The beef heart really wasn't bad at all though at points it had a strange bitter taste where it was more well done.  One of the pieces of chicken in my skewer was a bit under cooked and I opted for safety in this instance and did not eat it. We also each got a quarter chicken meal which had a small green salad, french fries and in my case a breast of chicken on the bone. It was actually very moist and juicy and properly cooked and I enjoyed it quite a bit though with the skewers it was a lot of food and I didn't completely finish everything. From there he drove me a more indirect method through the beaches of Barranco and Chorrillos. Chorrillos actually has a small replica of the big Jesus statue from Brazil but I didn't get a good view to take a picture of it. It is in a really poor place and position unless you are going to the district football stadium (yes soccer).  It wasn't bad to head back to the office from there.

We restarted the class fairly quickly and got through the material I had hoped to cover before we broke for the day. This is when the students dropped the bomb that they have a holiday on Friday (I think it is the Pope's day or Papal day or something like that which we would never observe in the US).  So now they want me to cover all the material that I am supposed to cover in 4 more days (I had not been worried about timing because I thought I had more than I typically do).  This means we will have to cram in the rest of the material before Friday and hopefully get it done by the end of Thursday instead. Business trips are for business first but this is going to create some long days and I am sure I am not going to stir any fires under them to make them any quicker. This coupled with the expectation that I was going to help with a service call on Tuesday. I will do what I am asked to do but it does sort of make things awkward.

Luis had to leave early so Cesar took me to the hotel instead. I settled for a bit then headed back to Larcomar (I think I like the walk as much as anything) and went to the TGIFriday's (I know, sad choice but I wanted little effort and a beer otherwise it might have been the Burger King for little effort and no beer).  I had a Cuscena Chopp (which means on draft apparently) and bacon cheeseburger. The burger was very good but big and a bit greasy. I guess that isn't surprising with cheese and bacon on it. I didn't manage to finish it. From there I headed back to the hotel for the night. A bit early but I was tired from the long day on Sunday and wanted the longer night's sleep.

The pictures from today can be found here.

Peru 2012 Day 8

The morning started out maybe with some confusion on my part. Daniela told me they would pick me up at the hotel for today's tour at 10:00am so I figured I could walk around to the park and take some pictures of things I had seen a few times but either hadn't gotten pictures of yet or maybe I wasn't happy with the chances I had to take pictures.  This meant I left the room at about 8:20am after getting cleaned up and ready and walked down to the park and a bit beyond but not all the way to the Larcomar.  This turned out to be a really good thing because I got back to the hotel at about 9:00am and was immediately rang by the front desk to tell me the tour was there to pick me up. I had been expecting an hour later. So I gathered my stuff and headed down and got on the van.  There was a grandmother and her son already there.  We picked up a mother and daughter pair a few minutes later then it was off to Callao which appears to be a very large district in Lima with a full range of middle class on down to poverty in it based on what I saw from the bus. The reason we were going there was for the port. The first tour of the day was a boat tour out to some islands that had been formed by an earthquake. Apparently the land between the mainland and the islands fell away when it happened. Daniela was supposed to meet me at the port and also evaluate this tour as well, however something must have happened because she never showed up before they took us out. I recall she said she lived in Callao so she was not supposed to be too far away and there didn't appear to be any traffic.

They took us out to the main tour boat on two smaller boats and we had to board the one directly from the other. It was an interesting setup. I suspect the pier wasn't big enough for the boat we took the tour with. The trip starts by passing the largest island which is owned by the navy. One passenger remarked that it was odd there were no boats there if it was owned by the navy. I suspect it is a little. Maybe they are off at war?  There was another small island to pass to get around to the back side of the larger island. The guide said the majority of the islands are considered wildlife preserves including the back side of the largest island.  The water was a little rough on the way out and the haze hung over us for most of the day.  There was very little information provided by a guide. The main focus of the boat trip was to take us out to two islands far behind the main island. One island was the home of many birds and the other was the home of around 7000 (they said) sea lions. I didn't count them but I can say there were a wicked lot of them out there. As we got out there the sun did start to break out of the haze. Also when you got close to the islands all you could smell was the birds and it was bad enough even I could smell it.  They had to give some passengers cotton balls with alcohol in it so they could stand it. My lack of sense of smell does help me a bit in these regards. We stayed around the island for quite a while. The sea lions were all over the place on the islands and in the water and the howled and barked a lot and it was a strange collection of sights and sounds. They come in many colors (all grey, brown, yellowish or black) and they push each other around a lot and fight with each other and flip around in the water to dive and surface all over the place.  The noises were sometimes very unusual.  I can definitely say it was an impressive experience, even with the smell of the birds.

The reason for the stop was also so passengers could get out into the water and swim with the sea lions. I am sure it was a thrilling experience but I since I am not a great swimmer and that bothers me a lot in deep water (and it is there) I chose not to go out. In fact it was obvious that aside from the guides only one woman over 20 went out into the water. The rest of us old folks all stayed safely inside and watched. The sea lions did get really close to the swimmers and some even popped up out of the water inside their group or touched the people.  I am sure it was very cool to experience. There was a small part of me that regretted I didn't try it.  The water is about 20C  they claimed. If so that is about 68F. Their claim it was that warm was that there were jellyfish all around the area. The people who went in all got wet suits to at least help keep them warm. Supposedly the wet suits would protect them from the stings of the jellyfish. I am a bit iffy on this and that is one reason I regret less that I didn't actually go in the water.  I think they were in the water for 15-20 minutes. It was hard to say because I didn't bring my watch. It really didn't seem like a terribly long time at all.

After the sea lion island we headed in to the main island and saw some penguins that lived on another small rocky island along with some pelicans on a neighboring small rocky island.  The pelicans were also out in the harbor as we left and it was impressive to see them fly in single file formation, changing heights and directions in turn.  I haven't seen pelicans since I was in Florida as a kid so that was pretty cool. Also this was the first time I had seen penguins in the wild.  Come to think of it, this was the first time I was on a boat in the Pacific Ocean and also the first time I was on a boat south of the equator.  Reasonably cool firsts in my book.  After this stop it was around the other end of the big island and back into port.  I had not brought any sunscreen and by the end of the ride I could feel I was getting burnt. By then it was too late anyway. We returned to the port and were picked up by a bus who dropped me off at the hotel first a bit before 3:00pm.  I was hungry so I ran upstairs and found out how red I was (I am a bit but I think it will clear up in a day, I hope anyway). I was hungry so I immediately headed down to the McDonald's and had a hasty late lunch. I ordered the Cuarto del Libro con Queso.  It tasted like any other burger I've  had at McDonald's and was much better than the Bembos burger (though in visuals the Bembos looked better).  Then I walked down to the Larcomar area to get a few pictures of things I hadn't gotten in the daytime yet. The sun was out and there were some nice views to look at. I wandered as far as the bridge near El Parque del Amor (but did not cross over it) and then headed back to the hotel room.  When I got back it was a little bit before 5pm and there was a note from the front desk that Daniela had called to remind me to be ready for 6-6:30pm for the next part of my day. I remembered she mentioned a traditional dancing show but I didn't recall what else was happening and I figured it was just the dinner and dancing show and she said she was not going to that.

To my surprise she arrived a little bit after I started waiting downstairs in front of the hotel. She asked me if I received the itinerary she wrote up for me in English and I had to explain that Luis is not very good at doing things on time and completing everything. He gets distracted easily.  She apparently did a very nice job of translating the itinerary for the weekend into English for me. At this point I found out that we were going to Parque de la Reserva then I was to go to the dinner and dance show.  We arrived at the park took pictures of a couple of lit up fountains then rushed through the park to get to the big fountain. There was a show with lasers, lights and even movies being played on the fountain water. It was all set to music and lasted about 20 minutes. I am not sure if it happens every night but I suspect it does. They played different types of music from classical to traditional Peruvian to some modern stuff. I took videos of some of it and a few pictures too. Hopefully they came out well enough in the dark.  After the show was over we got to go through the park a bit and take a few more pictures of some of the nicer fountains. I took a few specifically for Daniela because her camera;s memory chip ran out.  After that we even walked under a fountain tunnel. If we stayed to the right it was not too bad for getting wet. While we were watching the big show Daniela decided she would like to try to come to the restaurant if they would let her so she asked Rodrigo, our guide, after the show and he called the restaurant.  They said yes she was able to come along which I was very happy for. From there we had to leave the park and get on the bus to the restaurant for the show.

The restaurant was called La Dama Inana and the food served was buffet style. We were able to get our salad/appetizer course before the show started. We had to get the other courses in the pauses between dances. The show consisted of a series of traditional Peruvian dances performed on an raised, oval stage in the center of the restaurant.  They started with some of the more simple dances and worked their way to the much more complex stuff. Some dances were obviously influenced by the Spanish. Some were influenced by the jungle region and some by the highlands as well I think. I really lost count of the number of dances they performed but all of them were done well. The dancers seemed to be having fun dancing them which makes it more enjoyable I think.  They even took some audience members onto the floor during some dances. An older couple from one of the South American countries actually danced quite well (I could see a flag that was not Peruvian but I couldn't tell which one it was). Since it was more traditional I appreciated this more than the Scottish show in Edinburgh a few years back (they did too many things that were meant to cater to the mostly very old people that see it).  The highlight of the night is the scissor dance which involves the dancers clanging scissors to a beat and performing very complex and acrobatic dances. The scissor dance lasted the longest of the bunch and had 6  men dancing together or taking turns. It is only performed by men.  Some of of the acrobatics they did looked very painful and much of the dancing looked like it must have taken years to learn.  After they finished the scissor dance the finale was a dance involving a lot of the god or demon costumes of the culture. There was obviously supposed to be a battle of good and evil and the various dancers came into the crowd and danced around the audience. Some of the dances were quite funny, like the fire dance where dancers were supposed to light fire to the backside of other dancers as they danced. They brought audience members up on stage for that and the chubby guy from South America was hysterical to watch actually.  All in all it was a good time and I enjoyed the food. They served us a chicha and a pisco sour again. I guess I am getting to be a pro at pisco sours.  Daniela was very happy with the scissor dance. She said it is her favorite traditional dance from her country. I could see why.  After the show was over it was back to the hotel where Daniela also got off the bus and went in search of a cab home. She lives by the port so she had a forty minute or so ride back.  Her office is in Miraflores she said, so she was used to the ride anyway.  Earlier in the evening I gave her my business card so we can exchange some pictures and hopefully keep in touch.  She is a very interesting and nice person.

I took a ton of pictures today. Enough to make up for all the lack of the week before and probably the lack of the week after.  They are located here.  I also took some videos during the day. I suspect one or two of them came out nice. I will have to figure out posting some of my videos again. I haven't done it in years.

Peru 2012 Day 7

The company I am working with arranged 2 tours for me during the weekend so I didn't really have to plan what to do on either Saturday or Sunday. This is probably a good thing as Lima is a big city that is also confusing as to which areas are safe or not. I know that Miraflores, where my hotel and the Larcomar mall are is safe and a couple other districts nearby are also supposed to be reasonably ok but I am fairly certain this is a city where you can easily turn down the wrong road by accident.

My tour was supposed to pick me up between 9 and 9:30am so I having to be perpetually early headed down to the lobby at 8:50 because they said to be in the lobby. While I was downstairs Daniela came over to greet me. She was to accompany me on both days' tours. She works for the tourism industry and her job through these two tour is to evaluate the tours for how good they are. So I sort of gained an unofficial escort throughout the process. I am not sure how they arranged it but it turned out that it worked pretty well.  We talked for a few minutes before the bus came to pick us up and then it was on to the first tour of the day. They took us to El Parque del Amor, The Park of Love, in Miraflores first. The guide was a youngish girl but she spoke English well and perform the tour in both English and Spanish. She was very knowledgeable and pleasant throughout the whole tour. The park is patterned after styles from Barcelona with a lot of mosaic tiled little walls with saying on them. In the center is a gigantic, awful looking statue of two lovers in embrace. It is traditional for Peruvians (or at least those from Lima) to go their after their wedding and have their picture taken in front of the statue for a good luck in their marriage.  The park is also near a bridge that they had to put up big protective walls because many people have fallen from the bridge and died. According to Daniela they used to bungee jump from the bridge and she evaluated those tours as well, meaning she did the bungee jumping.  Much braver than I am.

From there we moved on to Huaca Pucllana which is a Liman pre Inca ruins that was uncovered in the city. It is one of only two surviving in the city at all and I visited both today.  The place is pretty much fenced off so you really can't get into it and there are not many good spots for pictures but basically they are pyramidal ruins that are made of adobe bricks in what they call the library style, which means that the bricks are positioned vertically. They have a bit of space in between them as well to help absorb the shock of earthquakes and tremors which are the only real disasters in this region (maybe tsunami but still related when you get down to it).  The visit was fairly short. From there we took a ride to the center of Lima in which we learned about the district of Chorillos and a bit more Lima history.  From there we saw the Plaza Mayor or the central square. Much like in Cusco, on the square you will see the main cathedral and the city hall. The presidential palace and the archbishop's palace are both situated on the main square as well. Daniela was very proud when all the tourists on the bus said, "Wow," as we drove into the square.  From there we walked to the San Francisco Church and first visited the monastery which led us to the catacombs which had thousands and thousands of bones in it. They estimate that there are 25000 people buried in the catacombs. Daniela was very bothered by the catacombs. She said she was in it as a schoolgirl because they are required to do those kind of tours for cultural reasons and there were indeed lots of school tours today, but that she didn't like it then and now. She was very bothered by the bones and the smell of all the lime. I could see how nervous she was instantly. She started to break out on her hands a little bit and I think it was the nerves that caused it though I didn't say so to her. I did tease her about being able to bungee jump but not to stand in a catacombs. After the catacombs we went back up to the San Francisco Church for a few minutes and then the tour was basically over and we were driven to Larcomar.

Daniela stayed with me and lunch was provided in a restaurant in Larcomar called Mangos. The food was buffet but it was very good. I sampled several things including a very freshly made ceviche and a cooked cold mussel appetizer type thing served on shell as a salad. It was also very tasty. We were given chicha (not sure how to spell it still) and pisco sours too.  After a couple rounds of food we went for dessert. We chatted the whole time we were eating and it turns out she's quite traveled. Working with tourism she has worked on a lot of cruises and been to a lot of places but she also travels personally as well.  We discussed places we have been and liked for a large part of the day.

After lunch we were picked up by the tour company again for the second tour of the day which would bring us to Barranco first to see one of the old resort districts of the city. It is now a moderately wealthy area still if I understood correctly but there is a fishing village as well. The train that used to operate in Lima has a small museum in Barranco as well as their being a cathedral that was ruined in one of their earthquakes many years ago. Instead of rebuilding it they made a new one. It was an interesting little area. From there we started to drive out to Pachacamac which is the other ruins you can visit near Lima. You have to take the trans-American highway a short distance to get there. Along this road we saw a lot of the shanty towns on the hill just on the edge of the city of Peru. These towns were apparently formed right on top of a giant sand dune during the 70s and 80s when Peru was beset by locally instigated terrorists who wanted to introduce a dictatorship to the nation under their control. Many people moved from the highlands to the city of Lima to escape the terrorism.  During that time many Peruvian professionals also moved out of Peru to escape.  The problem with the local issue is that there are many people piled onto a giant mountain of sand that is actually filled with things that can cause them disease and is also very susceptible to earthquakes and tremors. I of course do not try to take pictures from bus windows anymore but I did get to take pictures of one area near the ruins that was similar though the buildings appeared to be much more well built.

The ruins of Pachacamac are much larger than the Huaca Pucllana and date through several different pre Incan cultures through to the Incans as well. Since there is not the same make up of earth around there the ruins were more made of adobe even in the Incan times so they didn't look a lot like what I saw in the highlands on my last trip to Peru. The ruins were in the process of being made more touristy it was obvious. We drove through the grounds in the bus which was probably for the best as it was a very large site.  Not that I couldn't walk it but it would have taken a long time to get through it. We did see the places were human sacrifices were made (always women the guide Andres said) and where they were kept and prepared to be sacrificed. The sacrificial area was the sun temple though it paled in comparison to Machu Picchu's sun temple.  The preparation area for the sacrifices was the best looking part of the ruins having been restored in the 1940s. It looked the most like Incan ruins but we could only see it from a distance and I fear the poor location of the sun really kept us from getting good pictures of it all the same. At least it is possible to see the trapezoidal windows that make very obvious that it is Inca construction. Overall the tour was good though the van was very hot and we were grateful for the time outside of it for the nice fresh air.  Even though Pachacamac is near the ocean it is technically in desert area. There is a river valley right near it also so there is green on once side and blue on the other, but the entire area of ruins is sand.

After the Pachacamac visit we were driven back to town where we were dropped off in Miraflores and after a small walk around I parted ways with Daniela for the evening and headed back to the hotel to freshen up then head back out to find dinner.  I again walked down to Larcomar and decided to eat at Cafe Cafe once more. So far it was my favorite dinner time meal in Lima and I hoped they could provide something good again. I didn't want anything complicated and decided to eat a Pizza Wolf which had sausage, pepperoni and salami as well as Tabasco.  I accompanied that with a couple Cuscenas.  The pizza was actually quite good and it didn't really take me too long to finish it. When I was settled up I headed back to the room but found a place that sells candies and other junk on the way back that had not been opened before and decided to buy a handful of things to much on for the week.  I am not sure why they were open on Saturday but I didn't see them any other day. By the way, in case you hadn't guessed my stomach/intestinal problem appears to have been very short lived as it did not repeat after the one instance so far. I will not complain.

The pictures from today are located here.

Peru 2012 Day 6

I generally do not get sick often if at all but I have to admit something is going on from last night to today.  I have a headache and felt either cold or hot throughout the night. Not something I am used to. I also had an intestinal clean before I went to bed that was a bit unpleasant. I cannot say what happened. I have been generally eating at decent places. Perhaps the lettuce from the burger? Hard to say.  I woke up on time and got cleaned up and gathered some clothes to send to laundry so I would be able to rewear them for next week and then headed down to drop them off at the desk and wait for my ride. As is typical Luis was late. I suspect he has never been on time for anything in his life. For me it is a need to be perpetually early. This generally means I am standing outside 20-30 minutes on average waiting for my ride. Cesar had to take a bus to the highlands to fix a system so was not around.  We got to the office and continued with the procedures we had not finished due to not having the correct cable. This unfortunately took me to later than I wanted but when we were done with that we started on our next lecture and task. The lecture took us to lunch time and I am mostly running into issues with Luis not being very rapid about getting anywhere.

We first took two of the students to their old office, the one they are moving out of soon, and then we had to pick up his 3 year old daughter from school and bring her to his house. Then he went in search of a restaurant that he could not find and decided instead to bring me to a restaurant all the way across town. The restaurant was the Chifa Modena China. Chinese of course. I had some white rice and beef with bean sprouts accompanied by jasmine tea (trying not to be too adventurous in case my stomach erupted) and Luis ordered a lot of food.  There was also a sweet radish appetizer he ordered. I had some of that because I figured it was safe too. Among all the time it took us to get around and to get the food and to eat we didn't get back to the classroom until an hour after we were supposed to. Typically I wouldn't mind so much but the students won't do anything at all without me there. So they just sat around while we were late. This mean that where we might have finished at a reasonable hour we no longer had that option. Instead we decided to break it off earlier and restart where we left off on Monday. Luis took Carlos to the warehouse on our way back to the hotel and we took yet another route to return there.

Once again I got myself unloaded of stuff and cleaned up and headed down to Larcomar for dinner. This time I decided to try Portofino which is right next door to Vivaldino a small bit further away from the crowded din.  It was a bit expensive for Lima but I ordered the Cordero Lumbrusco which was a lamb shank braised in red wine sauce. It was accompanied with a wild mushroom risotto. I also had a couple beers. This brand was new to me. It was called Pilsen Callao. It also appeared to be Peruvian based on the label. I think Cuscena is better though.  The lamb and risotto were both excellent but there was far too much of it and I didn't finish either. Nonetheless I enjoyed it immensely. It was not as good as the lamb shank at Carousel across from the Louvre but it was really good nonetheless.  After finishing dinner it was pretty much just the walk back to the hotel to relax and recover a bit from the hectic week.

The pictures from today can be found here.

Peru 2012 Day 5

Today started reasonably on time though the cab that brought us to the office took a completely different route than any other one we had taken. Truthfully each ride to the office has been different and I've seen a lot of different areas of the city just by sitting in the various cabs with Cesar. This ride had us going through an area that was obviously much poorer than most of the ways we had been taking. There were areas where a lot of the road was broken up and also there was definitely some form of outdoor market that we passed that looked like it was geared towards the poorer locals (definitely not the touristy Night Market from Hong Kong).  Class started ok and we carried through to lunch time without much issue (though I realized I had forgotten an important cable for the process).

Again Luis took me to lunch but this time we went to a mall more in the downtown area. This after we took a taxi to their old office because that was where his car was then another detour to his house so he could take a pill for a toothache he said. After that we went to the mall. This was definitely a nice mall but made for the locals and not for tourists. It was sort of like going to the Burlington Mall or perhaps more like going to the mall that my hotel was on top of in Hong Kong.  He took me to the very Peruvian restaurant Pizza Hut. It is more of a sit down restaurant here like it was in Hong Kong. He ordered me a lucuma drink (it is a Peruvian fruit. Very sweet and pulpy. The drink was thick. I liked it I will admit. He ordered an appetizer that had a chili chicken stuffed into a cannelloni.  The chicken was Peruvian in concept but with the pasta it was fused with Italian food. I ordered the Lasagna Bologneso which is a typical meat lasagna for the meal. It was probably a bit too much food but on top of that we got ice cream from a place called 4D.  It was just out in front of the restaurant in the mall. After eating it was back to the office to finish up the day of class.

Of course the missing cable was not easily provided so we had to do some other stuff until Cesar brought in one that we needed and we were able to figure out some software compatibility issues as well.  This did put us behind for the day but not significantly enough for me to be worried. The class has a bit of extra time built into it compared to the standard class we would give at home so things can be made up along the way.

Luis took a completely different route back to the hotel which took a bit longer than the other ways we had gone. I was fairly tired and my knees were a bit sore from crouching to make some things we were using work correctly and I didn't really feel like doing too much. After settling back in for a while I decided today was the day to try the McDonald's down the street.  It is about a 5 minute or less walk and it appears to always be crowded. However when I got there I really noticed how crowded it was. The lines for the registers were many people deep and I choice not to go there after all. This meant I instead walked all the way back down to Larcomar which in some respects was probably a good idea because my knees felt better after the stretch out.  I still decided to eat fast food however and opted for a local chain called Bembos. I think in the long run this was the mistake of my night. I got a doble queso, which of course is a double cheeseburger, with a small fries and a small Sprite. The fries were reasonably ok and Sprite is basically Sprite anywhere. The issue was with the burger which tasted microwaved and had some rather unpleasant tasting lettuce on it. Even after removing the lettuce I still only managed to eat about half of the burger. Deciding my night was basically a failure I just turned around and walked right back to the hotel for an early night.

The few pictures from today, all of food, are located here.

Peru 2012 Day 4

Today did start a bit more on time than the day before. Cesar got to the hotel around 8:10 which isn't bad considering and we made it to the office by 8:30. The main session for the morning was about teaching the students Unix. It is mildly humbling to talk about stuff like Unix to people who barely understand you. I won't even go into the idea of not being able to use my sense of humor. Completely lost in the translation so I don't even bother. After the students were done with the labs we split up and some of them were going to fix some customer problems and Luis and I were to go next door to a customer to look at one of their systems. I had already diagnosed one problem and put in the fix for that and found out another would require a software update but of course 2 problems turns into 3 automatically so we had to gather more for troubleshooting and talk to a few people. In all we were there for well over an hour and then we rushed off to lunch.

Luis took me back to the same restaurant in Larcomar (I suspect he likes it). This time I found out it was called Vivaldino.  I had their Lomo Saltado which is basically a beef stew like dish with onions, tomatoes and a brown sauce.  They serve that with fries and rice. I believe the chicken dish I had at the hotel a couple nights before was the chicken version of the same dish. I had had Lomo Saltado before on my first trip. It is good but not very exciting to the palate. He also ordered a potato and fish appetizer that had more octopus, shrimp and tuna. That was tasty but very filling.  I also tried the Peruvian version of Coca Cola. It tasted about the same as I always remember it. After that we rushed back to the office for the second half of the class to get some stuff done. Of course the students trying to fix things were late and that gave me the opportunity to write this part of the day out.

When they got back we really didn't have a lot of time unless we wanted to keep them there all night. I tried to get done a few things that would be good to make sure they were done before we did some other parts of the class but my test equipment ran out of battery (thankfully) and we decided to stop before it got too terribly late. Luis drove me back to the hotel and I tied up a few things then headed back down to Larcomar. The weather was quite nice with a reasonable breeze that I really enjoyed (yes a lot of people were in sweaters or jackets and me in my short sleeves). I did a couple spins around the mall having a tough time deciding what I wanted. I think I mostly did not want anything that looked too involved and short of fast food it did not look like I was going to have that happen unless I went to Friday's or Chili's, neither of which are a possibility in my book. Finally I decided on the Tony Roma's which is probably just as bad but since I have never eaten at one before I felt a little less sad about it. I wanted something simple and had a Cuscena or 2 and a turkey and ham panini with fries.  Mostly American I am sure but simple. It was actually still too filling for what I wanted. In any event I enjoyed it. Maybe if we had eaten lunch before 3:00pm I would have felt different for my choices.

After the dinner I pretty much just headed straight back to the hotel to crash for the evening. It felt like a long day.

The pictures from today can be found here.

Peru 2012 Day 3

Apparently I hadn't understood how bad traffic can be in Lima but when my ride who was suppose to arrive at 8:00am didn't show up until past 8:30 I began to see a little bit more about it. This time it was Cesar who got me and we took a taxi to the office. The taxi driver was a typical Peruvian or at least Liman driver. That means that he has no qualms pushing into other cars and the idea of lanes and traffic signals or signs basically meant nothing to him. Basically it appears that driving in Lima is like driving in Palermo on steroids. I can definitely say I expected to be in several accidents on the way to the office. I am not sure why everyone is in the rush they are that they obey no traffic rules at all but that is definitely the issue down  here. I am very glad they told me not to get a rental car. I would have shaved at least 15 years off my life that way. Driving in Sicily was on my own time frames so it wasn't much of an issue. To have to get somewhere by a specific time in this traffic would be awful and probably frightening.

Class started later than we had hoped but it got underway without much hitch and we made it to lunchtime having accomplished what I wished to get done. Today Luis took me to lunch and he drove me down to Larcomar which is a big outdoors mall about 15-20 minutes walk from my hotel and basically overlooks the Pacific Ocean (it is a little difficult to think of an ocean being to the west instead of east). I am not sure what the name of the restaurant was but it specialized in seafood he said. I ordered a grilled sea bass over mashed potatoes with fried asparagus and a red wine reduction sauce called corvina Miraflora I believe. Miraflora is the name of the district my hotel and the mall is in. It is a very touristy (and apparently therefore safe) area of Lima.  Luis also ordered us an octopus appetizer that had an interesting sauce with it. It was very good. We each also had a pisco sour. Pisco if you recall from my first visit to Peru is an alcoholic beverage something similar to a mild tequila.  In any event it was one and neither of us finished them. They add sour mix and froth and egg white over the top. It tastes reasonably ok if you like sour mix, which I do.

We got back to the office and started on the next segment of class which took us to about when I expected to end for the day and then Luis and I visited one of their customers right across the street from their office called Oncocare. They have a system that is having a couple problems and I took a look at it. I think we at least diagnosed one of the issues before the end of the day. The other might take some external help with my limited resources in Peru.  After that he drove me back to the area of Larcomar to show me how to walk there from my hotel. It was basically 2 turns and a straight shot after that. He drove me back to the hotel and I dropped stuff off and got cleaned up and headed down to Larcomar on foot.  It took between 15 and 20 minutes for me to walk there, probably on the lighter side of those numbers.

I scanned the various restaurants and decided on a place called Cafe Cafe.  I ordered a Cuscena Dark and a dish called Beer Chicken which had a special beer sauce, peppers and onions and was accompanied by a green rice. This dish was excellent and I would definitely order it again. The chicken was moist and properly cooked as was the rice and the waiter, George, gave me a spicy sauce called rocotto (or something like that) that was spicy enough for me and made the dish even more enjoyable. George was very friendly. He apparently lived in California for 10 years and his English was excellent. After dinner it was back to the hotel for the night. The weather held out as being cool and clear but the humidity was a bit high as I expect it to be the whole time here so I got back to the hotel nearly soaked in sweat from the walk.  I think I made it back about 8:30pm.  All in all for around 35 minutes of walking it was worth the trip. 

The pictures from today can be found here.

Peru 2012 Day 2

I woke up a bit late for me today at 6am but that was mostly because I got in wicked late from the flight and I was very tired. Coupled with the fact that Peru does not do daylight savings time I think I squeaked out a couple extra hours of sleep. The late wake up was fine because Luis was to pick me up at 8:30 so I knew I would have plenty of time to get ready. Breakfast is not included with my hotel stay so I will not bother to try to find it for the trip. Fortunately I have a 4 cup coffee pot in my room and a lot of coffee to make.  After taking my time getting sorted out where I did not the night before I got cleaned up and ready and headed down a few minutes before 8:30. Luis arrived maybe 5 minutes late but it was obviously because of the traffic. The ride was obviously not that far from the hotel to their new office (they just purchased it 2 weeks ago apparently) but the traffic is fairly rough and reminded a lot of driving through Palermo. I am very glad I did not have to rent a car here. My sanity would not have made it unscathed. Palermo was bad but I was on my own schedule. To try to get somewhere on time during the rush hour in Lima would basically break me I am sure. I am very surprised more cars are not dented.

We were supposed to be to the new office for 9am but were probably about 10 minutes late. They are going to move from the old office to the where we are having class but as of yet it has been too short a time so they figured the new office would be a great place to have the training. Honestly the ceilings feel a bit low but it is a nice place complete with serious bars on the doors and windows giving a solid compound-like feel.  Since nothing else had really been moved in yet there was plenty of room to get the class equipment in. Happily they had a new projector and a series of desks for everyone but we were only using the wall for the screen which was still relatively ok.  They had 2 systems to work with for the labs and they are both brand new. Better equipment than I have every taught with (though we did find we have a compression issue on one of them and will have to fix that before the class is done). They said that one of the systems might be going to a customer and one of them is probably going to remain in their office for a test system.

The students, there are 6 of them, do not really speak English well and even though I am speaking slowly I do not think that most of them are getting a lot out of the lecture time except when either Cesar or Luis translates for them. The minor problem with that is that both Luis or Cesar could be on calls at any point during the day. Still, both of them are helping as much as they can. The owners of the company here, IDISAC, showed up to see what was going on and take pictures for the government to prove they were actually getting the training. I hadn't realized how soon they needed the training. They have their visit soon, possibly during the class. They were very nice and offered any help I might need.

Cesar took me by taxi to a cevicheria somewhere a moderate distance away for lunch. They offered a buffet and I tried most everything on the bar.  I had a couple different types of cold seafood salads, a crab and potato thing, 2 types of ceviche and 2 dishes similar to ceviche in concept but I didn't get the name properly. All were very good. Unfortunately I forgot both my cell phone and my camera for the lunch visit. Cesar took a picture of my first dish with his cell phone. Hopefully I get the picture from him before the class is over.

The class went well enough for day 1 considering the language barrier and the hastily put together setting.  When we finished Luis drove me back to the hotel where I sat for a few minutes before taking a quick spin around the neighborhood. Unfortunately it gets dark at around 6pm here in the winter so I figured I would not stray too far. I walked up and down the area and decided I would eat dinner at the hotel. I ended up eating at the bar as they restaurants open at 6:30 and 8:30 respectively and it was about 6:10 when I got there. The bartender said he served all day. It made sense. I had a couple Cuscena beers. They were the same as I remembered them from my previous trip. Not a beer to write home about but not bad really.  For a meal I ordered their chicken creole which was interesting. It was supposed to be a Peruvian style dish. I am sure it uses a name other than creole on the Spanish menu.  In any event I don't think I would have to eat it again, it wasn't near as flavorful as all the fish from lunch. All the same it was filling so I can't complain. After dinner I just basically headed back up to the room to relax for the rest of the night and hopefully get to bed a bit earlier.

The weather here is apparently going to be grey and overcast for the entire stay according to Luis and Cesar. I won't get my hopes up on seeing sun but the temperature is not so bad. The problem is it is very humid and there was even a fairly constant mist going all day.  I do not mind so much as this is a work trip and I am not going to be outdoors for the majority of my time here but it does make things feel a bit dismal.

My room is very noisy with the traffic here. The locals use the horn to say hello, good-bye, some curses and pretty much everything else. Even though I am on the 7th floor the traffic noise is fairly constant and the horns are pretty much non-stop if from varying distances. It felt like they were noisy as I slept too but that may have been flight induced hallucinations. Night 2 will provide a better idea of that concept.

The few pictures from today are here.  There aren't going to be many during class days of course.

Peru 2012 Day 1

To call this a day in Peru is a complete misnomer but the travel day is always part of the process so it has to count. The initial flight was to Newark International Airport.  I haven't been to Newark in around 24 years. I was given first class for the flight which was nice for a couple reasons. The plane was a few minutes late to arriving and they let the first class board after the first class cabin was finished being cleaned but everyone else had to wait a bit longer before they let them in.  Not that it meant much difference but I always feel waiting in the terminal is akin to waiting in line and hate being in line so would rather board as fast as I can. First class also meant I was given a package of cookies. The flight was very short and they stayed at low altitude. It was a beverage service only flight otherwise. Honestly there was little to report about it. I had a window seat which I don't typically but in first class it really isn't an issue. The were no bumps and it was over quick.

Landing in Newark it was a fair sized walk in terminal C to get to my new gate but I didn't have to recheck security or anything like that. I did not care for the gate layout for gate 136 which had no seats near the entry point, only a fair distance away.  I bought and ate a slice of pizza from a small stand named The Famous Famiglia and had part of a root beer with it. It was a reasonably ok piece of pizza.  The wait for boarding was about an hour and a half in total and it wasn't terrible.  Being Premier with United I got Economy Plus seats and earlier boarding as well.  The plane was full but getting on early is the key to having someplace for in your overhead. I know there are people who like to wait as long as possible but they have to live with only items they would be willing to jam under the seat in their foot space. The flight was also mostly uneventful and only had a few spots of bumps. It was 7 hours long though. I watched movies since the time change was only 1 hour as they do not do DST in Peru.  My first set of headphones they gave me was broken (I forgot to bring my own thanks to hasty packing).  I got a second set. The in seat entertainment unit had an issue that caused it to blackout and skip while playing the movies but it was not terrible enough to bark about it, just annoying. I first watched John Carter and kind of liked it. I will need to see it on a more realistic screen at some point. I had a hard time reading the subtitles when in Martian.  The biggest name in the movie I think was Mark Strong who was Lord Blackwell in the first Sherlock Holmes and was also in a couple other Guy Ritchie films. Still it was enjoyable enough that I will try to watch it in better resolution at some point I think.  The thing is the movie was so poorly marketed that it bombed despite being an ok movie. I think it might have helped if there was someone more famous in it.  After that was done I watched a Japanese movie called The Wings of The Kirin which was a murder mystery though not a suspense thriller. It was sort of like a Japanese version extended CSI episode or something. I liked it anyway.  Finally, I watched Warhorse which was obviously a kids movie but not bad anyway. I think even with the lower resolution and small blackouts I wouldn't need to watch it again. Nominally WWI is involved but I think it is fairly external. In any event I did like it enough not to turn it off.  The in flight food was terrible so I basically ate the salad, roll and half the actual meal before the soft brownie.  Though it was an international flight they didn't have free beer and wine. Not a big deal but I guess a little disappointing.

We landed at about 8:30pm or so then the long trek through immigration (I got very luck on line choice there and managed very quick processing) then waiting for baggage pickup which I think I was the second last bag off the plane, at least it felt that way. You win some and lose some on that front. I won the last time and lost this time. Then on to customs which was quick and painless. Cesar and Luis were waiting in the main hall to pick me up. Luis has a nice Renault. The drive was about 40-45 minutes it felt though I didn't check my watch. They got me to the hotel, which is the DoubleTree El Pardo in Lima, and check in was relatively painless so I was basically at the room and mostly exhausted by about 10:45 or so. After a quick unpacking I basically headed right to bed but without sufficient wind-down time so I took a bit longer to fall asleep than I normally would.  In any event there were a couple hours in Peru so it does count.

The couple pictures from the day can be found here.

Departing for Peru Today

Starting off a fairly lengthy flight to Peru via Newark, NJ.  Will report the day when I reach there.

Delaware this Week

I arrived in Newark, Delaware yesterday for a week of meetings in our DRC office. I will fly home on Friday morning and crash our own office straight from the airport as I have to gather some things and tie up some loose ends before I travel to Peru for the 2 week training class.

Iceland Slideshow

Since the gadget is messing with me. Here is a quick slideshow.

Pictures for Iceland Day 6

The few pictures for Iceland Day 6 are located here.

Iceland Day 6

Those of us that were going to the Blue Lagoon got up and got the house cleaned and packed and such so that we could be ready for our bus at 9:30am. Dee wasn't going because I guess the spa water would be bad for her skin so she opted to just hit the town one last time while we all went off.

The bus ride was probably about an hour and fifteen minutes when combining the transfer and the like so we got to the Blue Lagoon around 10:45am or so.  The package we bought was inclusive of the bus rides to the place then on to the airport so we just pretty much needed to get in and get our towels and such then get head out to the hot spring. It was open air and the weather was again perfect such that it was a tad chilly after the pre soak shower but by the time you got in the water you forgot about that. They had a bar which you were allowed to buy 3 beers during your soak time. We bought 3 each except for Scott who doesn't drink beer.  We soaked for about an hour and fifteen minutes, maybe a bit longer. The place got continually more crowded as we stayed. The weather stayed perfect. After the soak we got cleaned up and ate lunch in the restaurant there which basically we got burgers for the speed of it.  They were good burgers at least.  After that it was on to the bus to the airport then all of that processing.

Our flight was basically on time, only a little late with the disorganized plane entry (I would prefer staged entry).  I watched two movies which basically took up the entire duration of the flight. First it was Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows which was not as good as the first one though was basically ok.  Then I watched The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo which was uncut and honestly entirely inappropriate for a plane ride but was a very good film. I was surprised it was as uncut as it was. I did enjoy it. Fortunately my neighbors weren't kids.

From there it was everyone saying their goodbyes at the airport then on back to home. Iceland was indeed a beautiful country. I am sure we benefited from the weather more than some might but all the same it was a great experience.  It was really nice to have a dark night time again though when I got back.

I do have a few pictures to get off the camera and upload and I will do that as soon as I can when I get home.