Again I didn’t find a micro going till IBM so I walked to the metro and just went the last few kilometers by bus. When I told my collegues how I got there they just laughed at me and one knew a website, which has some routes mapped, which helped me finally find the right line, which I’ll try tomorrow.
The IBM building is quite big, has a nice soccer field, cafeteria and an e-cafe where you can play Wii or PS3 (on which Fifa matches are common). Seems like in Peru it’s not that easy to get the “Great place to work” award, which IBM holds here as well for several consecutive years.
One of my collegues was really worried about me taking the laptop on those buses and tried to persuade me to take a safe cab instead, but that would cost 10 € per day. Still I was lucky – we found someone, who lives in Miraflores right next to my hostel and he offered to take me home. He was a little ill this day, so he went shortly after 4 p.m. and I had a good excuse to leave work early 😉
On the way back he told me about a Peruvian airline which everybody loved, because of their new planes and cheap prices. After a few years of operation it turned out this company wasn’t making money by transporting passengers, but cocaine on their planes, so they were closed and now Peruvians miss that airline 😀
I just received a mail telling me I finally got accepted at the UCSB! I wouldn’t have believed that it might work this fast, but it’s nice however. Now everything will work as planned if I manage to get the acceptance package sent to Perú and get my American visa from here…
Because I was not really tired, I decided to stay up till the early evening to avoid jetlag. So I enjoyed my breakfest and the very friendly owner of the hostel gave me a map of the area and explained how to get to the important places. I went to a supermarket to buy a few things and get some soles. Fruits are really cheap here (0.50€ per kg of melons for example), but things like ham and juice (whyever) are really expensive (apple juice starts from about 1.40€ per liter which gets you organic juice in Germany).
Afterwards I was tempted to go to the beach, but decided it might be smarter to explore the way to the office without my laptop. I was told there was a microbus running from only two blocks away until a few streets away of IBM, but I couldn’t find the right line and decided to walk to a metro station, because I wanted to try it anyway. It was about 2.5 kilometers, but the area felt save to walk. The metro works like in New York, you only get on with a valid card which you can preload with money. Every ride costs 1.50 soles, less than 40 cents.
Buying the card was a bit difficult, because I didn’t have my passport or ID, but after some discussion it somehow worked without it. The trains and stations are in operation only since a few months and look really clean and well-maintained. Trains run every 15 minutes and are very punctual. I went three stops to a really big road called “Javier Prado” where I finally had the courage to try a microbus.
It’s a really interesting experience. You have multiple lines going through the city and the buses very from very old and rusty to new and big with up to 40 seats. Some just show a number on it, most also some places they’ll be driving to. There is always a driver and a – let’s call him conductor. The conductor always stands in the door and operates it manually. At every stop or simply when there are people on the sideway he tries to get people on the bus by shouting places it goes by. Also those conductors try to speed up people getting on and off by shouting things like “baja, baja, baja” at them. During the drive the conductor also collects the money from people (as far as I figured out between 1 sol and 2.50 soles depending on the trip lenght).
The second one I asked whether it goes to the end of Javier Prado said yes and even offered to tell me when I had to get off to walk to IBM. That worked perfectly, I paid my 1 sol and walked to the office to take a few pictures.
On the way back I wasn’t this lucky and got on the wrong bus, which went to Miraflores (I had asked for that), but not near where I wanted to go. Fortunately I had Google Maps so I got off when it became clear we were heading to the wrong direction and walked about 7 kilometers home, which was nice to see the city and take a few pictures. In general it feels very save (I haven’t been to bad areas though) and is also amazingly clean, you see guards, cleaners, gardeners and policemen everywhere.
I just arrived in Lima. The LAN flight had even better service than British Airways and I did not have any problem with my visa. Admission took about 60 seconds. At the customs section I was then lucky. There you have to press a button and randomly a red or green light appears. I had the green light and didn’t need to have my bag checked.
When I got out of the gate I already saw the sign “Mr. Hoffmann” and was greeted nicely. We rode a new Toyota through deserted streets (at 5 a.m.), which are very clean and in good condition, thought some neighborhoods around the airport do not look very appealing. You also see people sleeping next to the steet, but it’s not really many of them.
Because my single room is still occupied until afternoon I now have a group room just for myself even with a balkony. So far Lima looks really nice 🙂
Till now my travel was smooth. I sat next to a women from Spain on the flight from Berlin to London so we ended up talking about traveling, music and South America mostly in Spanish which was a good start for me, but also reminded me of my limited ability to communicate (understanding works quite well though) compared to English.
On the flight to Miami I unfortunately did not get the seat I booked but a window seat which was nice to get an overview of the Miami area, but a little bit unconfortable as it is more difficult to just get up and take a walk. I had ordered a vegetarian meal which usually is better than the standard meals in my experience and also in this case. The “special meal” passengers got their food before the regular meal was served and it was really good. Unfortunately 10 hours don’t pass that quickly so I read half of the book “My Exile Lifestyle” from Colling Wright. My thoughts about it are covered in this blog post.
Generally the flights till now were better than I had expected, the British Airways staff was really nice on both flights and I did not leave the plane hungry 🙂
It is 20:30 in Miami right now. We arrived from London early, but the passport check took about an hour. Afterwards I actually wanted to go searching a geocache, but as soon as I went outside I had to admit that idea was a bit to spontaneous. Although the area is nice, there are steets and cars everywhere and it is pretty impossible to leave the airport walking.
So I just sat outside for a few minutes enjoying the 30°C and afterwards took the Miami Mover (a train-like, automated bus) to the car rental center to get a little closer to downtown Miami.
There wasn’t much to see over there, leaving the trip itself (3 minutes) to be the main attraction. At this point I realized I would have to spend the remaining four hours differently and went searching for a wireless connectivity inside the airport. I ended up in the Miami International Airport Hotel Lobby with some food and drink from Starbucks (which was quite cheap compared to what else is available here at the airport) and no internet writing this blog post to submit it later (technically tomorrow) in Lima.
I already mentioned the interesting blog of Collin Wreight I found while (not) packing my bags. I wondered about whether I could read it during the trip and the $1.90 book “My Exile Lifestyle” in the Kindle Store seemed to be a good and cheap way for not having to think of a quick way to convert the blog for reading on the kindle.
After having read half of the book on the flight to Miami, I wondered about my motivation to read about other peoples’ traveling experiences and whether it might impair my own desire to explore or instead widen my horizon and thereby encourage digging deeper or at least experiencing a similar experience.
I came to the latter conclusion, because I think traveling is not mainly about going to the sight one after another, which are indeed less interesting the more you already know and have seen about them.
The most interesting aspect of traveling in my opinion is what you can experience in situations, that are at least to some extent unplanned thus allowing and unbiased view on things and the flexiblity to do just what your gut tells your in that very moment or decide between very limited options. Those are the moments where it’s easy or even neccessary to get out of the comfort zone. Now you know the main reason why I usually don’t care about reserving seats on trains.
Though it’s not as fancy because I’m not one of the last passengers exploring the world starting from Tegel Airport as planned, I’ll still start my journey here to arrive in Lima early tomorrow morning after a nearly 24-hour flight (including 8 hours of waiting in London and Miami) totaling to about 12000 kilometers which means a 1/3 earth circumference 🙂
I suffered from procrastination again yesterday morning while trying to pack my things, but as always found some interesting stuff (could read on for hours, the guy really reminds me of *someone*) on the net and still got everything done.
Fortunately I have my business visa, will be picked up from the airport and my accomodation in Lima is organized as well. Obviously I’m very excited about Perú, its people, traditions and whether I’ll be able to communicate 🙂
What I’ll miss:
My family and friends although I guess that doesn’t come unexpected
Summer (although winter in Perú is not that bad)
Our standard of public transportation (even the S-Bahn) and my bike
About this blog: I’ll be writing regularly, whenever I consider something worth sharing. I have thought about which language is most suitable for this blog and decided to write in English not because my English is so nice (it actually isn’t but I’m still trying hard), but because I want the people I meet in Perú and the U.S. to be able to read what I write about my experiences as this will most likely involve them as well. Of course I know this blog is available to anybody on the internet including evil search robots, so I will not mention personal information or names.
