I have now safely arrived in Lima, Peru. Checked in at a Hotel and am now using some free WiFi available from my room. So I was almost able to call my mum using Skype. Unfortunately she is not online with a microphone-equipped computer. But still: the wonders of modern technology…
Anyway. With arriving there were no major problems. Flight, Immigration control, luggage check, etc. Though the flight was a bit uncomfortable. I had a bad seat (right in the middle, with one person to the left of me and two on the right). According to the ticket I was sitting on the aisle but I wasn’t in the mood to fight with the person who took that seat and switched quietly. Also - and more important - during my Austrian Airlines flight to Tokyo I had my own TV screen, while here with Iberia there were only a few shared ones. But as the flight only makes for two of the ca. 220 days of my stay in Peru, that’s not too important to me.
But after coming out to the reception hall the problems started. I have a contact in Lima where I can stay for the first days in Lima (two days now and a few days after coming back from language school). At the airport a tourist office guy chatted me up and told me he was sent by those people. Actually he asked me whom I’m waiting for and I told him the name. Then he said he was sent by them. While I found it highly dubious in the beginning, it started to make sense after a while in the conversation. So he helped me to get to a hotel and we went for a drink. During the drink he asked me about my friend “Willy S.” (full name known to me). I did not know such a person and told him so. We then realized that I was waiting for “Wilson R.” and that he made a mistake at the airport. He was actually sent by Willy to pick up another guy. Ouch! I phoned my friends here in Lima, told them about the problem, and they are now coming to pick me up this morning.
Somehow I always seem to have some similar problems when arriving in foreign countries. When going to Japan I had met a nice young Japanese guy on the plane. In the airport he helped me get a ticket for the train. It was more expensive than the price that I expected, though (I had detailled information about how to get to my target when arriving, including ticket price). So I asked him about this. And only after about 15 minutes of discussing he finally realized he had purchased the wrong ticket. A few weeks later a friend told me, that maybe that guy at the airport had purchased a ticket to Ishikawa instead of Ichikawa (which sound quite similar, especially when pronounced by a Swiss guy who does not speak Japanese well).
So after all that excitement yesterday I stayed at the Hotel, watched a bit of TV and slept. Though I’m probably quite jet lagged because I was not able to sleep the times I wanted to.
Tomorrow, October 1st, I’m flying to Arequipa for language school.
By the way: my time zone is UTC-5. You can always check my current time online.