Lima, Perú

     This past weekend, my room mate, Tasia, and I went to Lima, Peru! This story begins back in January when we found our plane tickets. One evening, our tico papa told us about some cheap airline tickets. It then took us an entire 3 hours to find the perfect tickets. Tasia and I were so excited to have found 100$ plane tickets to Peru, that we wanted to press "purchase tickets" at the exact same time. So we did. HORRAY we thought, until Tasia received an email saying her ticket could not be purchased and that she needed to call the company. After plenty of time speaking with them on the phone, she was forced to purchase a different return ticket, leaving a full 24 hours before mine. This meaning that I would have a full day in Lima on my own.
     Thankfully, the next morning, Tasia woke up to an email saying that they had opened another seat

on my return flight, and that they were holding it for her for only a few hours. She was forced to try and buy the ticket during class. But, of course things were not working out in our favor, and her mom had to purchase the ticket for her, because her card kept getting declined for whatever unknown reason. The tickets were finally purchased the next day, and we had the same return ticket!
     On the day of departure, Thursday, March 12th, we were loaded with excitement! So much we couldn't contain ourselves. We received an email from Kayak.com saying that our flight 'may be delayed' about 35 minutes. We checked with the airport and it read that our flight was on time. Our tico friend Adrian, picked us up for the airport and we arrived around 2:00 pm. We walked in, checked in, printed our boarding passes and paid our exit taxes. We walked up to security, only to be turned away for the first time to complete some paper work. We turned around, completed the paper work and tried again. Still, no. We needed to do more. Finally, they let us pass to get our bags checked. I make it through fine, as does Tasia. Except for her bag. The security officer pulls aside her bag, only to find a handful of rocks that she had forgotten to removed since our last excursion. We laughed and quickly moved on.
     We went to find our gate and get comfortable since we still had a little while until we were able to board the flight. We unloaded along the wall next to some wall chargers to keep our technology fully functionable. As time passed we noticed some cloudiness that looked like fog outside of the windows, soon to find out from Adrian, that a volcano had just erupted... What did this mean for our flight? A lot. Adrian convinced us that everything was fine and

that it happened all of the time (which was a lie). We quickly came to understand that this was the worst volcanic eruption in over 20 years. It was nearing 5:15 (our departure time), and our plane was still not at our gate. We went up to the desk for some information, and all they could tell us was that our plane was still in San Salvador, and that we were delayed. We thought, oh that cant be too bad, a flight from San Salvador is only, give or take an hour, and that we would be on our way soon.
     Around 7 pm, we received a message from Tasia's mother, asking why we were sitting in a closed airport... We quickly questioned the desk, "What is the latest update?" The man at the counter says to us, "Well the airport is closed and we are going to hopefully reopen at 8 pm." How long were we sitting in a closed airport before we knew? 3 entire hours. Not one announcement made, or anything. Our flight even still said, ON TIME!
     With growing anger, we returned to our seats to relax and watch some movies. 8:00 pm arrived and people start filing themselves through the gates of the door. We returned to the desk again, and he says to us that we are all leaving. What does that mean!? We found ourselves waiting in line at immigration. They start checking peoples passports to verify, who even knows at this point. They ended up just giving up on the mass of people and letting them through.
      Next, we got in line to wait and see if and when we were going to be able to leave for Peru. We waited for around 2+ hours. It turned out that the airline opened up a new flight for the next morning at 9 am to Lima, Peru. It seemed to be working out in our favor, because we were now getting a direct flight instead of having a layover. And on the bright side, we were only going to be losing 4 hours of the time we originally had in Peru. Adrian returned to pick us up from the airport and took us home.
     The next morning, we caught a cab back to the airport at 6 am. When we walked in the doors, already having our tickets in hand. A lady from our airline company stops us, and tells us that our flight is now cancelled (AGAIN!) and that we have been rescheduled for 2 pm. We march ourselves up to the desk, demanding answers. The airline again told us that the airport was closed, and that they were still unsure when it was going to re-open, and that their hopes were that it will open around noon. Thankfully, they changed our return flight ticket to Monday, instead of Sunday, free of charge, giving us even more time that originally planned in Lima.
     We sat ourselves upstairs in a little café, along with every other person who was waiting for the airport to open. You can only imagine how many people were scheduled to be on flights between 6-Noon. The news channels brought in their camera crews and started interviewing people throughout the airport, and I even made it onto national television! I wasn't interviewed, but my tica family told me that they had a camera set on me for a solid amount of time! It was pretty cool to hear. Just as it begins nearing noon, we heard that the volcano was yet again, erupting. As our patience shortened we stopped a police officer to see if he knew any more new information, and asked if he could confirm this repeating volcanic eruption. And he did confirm it. When we asked him "Do you know when the airport will open?" He responded with, "The only thing I can tell you to do, is to pray." Now, coming from a policeman, this was probably the worst news we could even fathom hearing. So, we prayed, both in Spanish and in English.

     Sure enough, at noon, the airport opened and we filed ourselves through security one more time. We found our gate, and made ourselves comfortable. Although, we noticed that there was only a handful of people waiting outside our gate. Tasia got up to assess the situation, so she went upstairs and asked someone, only to find out that they changed our gate, and failed to display that information on the monitors. We moved our belongings upstairs, began talking to an older couple and explained to them all of our trouble along the way. The women looks at us and says, "From a mother's perspective, I'm going to advise you to turn around and go back home. If this volcano keeps erupting, you aren't promised a return flight home on Monday. That means you're just going to keep missing your classes." Tasia and I sat down and thought long and hard about what to do, and we both agreed that we have come this far, we couldn't turn back now.
     Around 2:30 our flight starts to board, and we couldn't be any more ecstatic! We thought, this is it, we are really leaving for Peru now! Shortly after that thought, they start DE-BOARDING OUR PLANE! Why? Because there was a gasoline leak and they needed to call the firefighters to come and assess the situation! We thought this was the end, we thought, we are not going to Peru, it's all over with. The man at the desk announces that it will be at least 30 minutes before we can begin boarding again. So we sit back down and think long and hard about our troubles.
     Finally, around 3:45 they board our flight and we are off to Lima, Peru for the weekend! When we arrived in Lima, our friend Daniel (whom we were meeting there), had a taxi there waiting for us. Which was nice to have after all of the ruckus the last few days. That night we walked around and explored the city for a while. We needed to exchange our money for soles, which is the currency in Peru. Tasia started at an ATM that allowed her to request an amount of money, but then tell her that her transaction was cancelled. She tried again. The same thing happened. So we tried a different ATM, still not working. She tried about 4 or 5 ATM's before she called it quits.

     The next morning, Tasia checked her bank account to find that $1000 US dollars was withdrawn from her account. Even though she didn't receive any money from the ATM's, each time she requested an amount of money, it withdrew from her account.
     For the rest of the day, Tasia and I parted ways to explore the city on our own! Tasia took advantage of her day by doing a food tour! I went with Daniel and his dad on a tour of the city, on a double decker bus. We also went around to different restaurants to try all different kinds of yummy Peruvian food. Peruvian food is by far the best food I have ever tasted! We went to a couple places for ceviche, and I was really nervous at first because I don't like seafood that much (at all really!). Ceviche turned out to be one of my new favorite snacks! I even tried the octopus!
     The next day we didn't have any plans, so we took a trip to a few museums around the city as well as a chocolate tour! This was a lot of fun because we got to try all different kinds of chocolate and even make our own. Lima is really well known for their museums, because they have one for every kind of person. At night, we went to a famous restaurant and had the most delicious food.
     Monday morning we had to head back to San Jose, Costa Rica. We were extremely sad about leaving but found it in God's grace that we are able to be traveling the world.

Adios for now Lima, I will return!