Easter Island and Peru day 6

            Special announcement!  We have clean clothes!

            Just before midnight, after our arrival at the Lima airport, we contacted a supervisor and even though by now we had no record of having checked our bags (we’ll explain next time we see you), our bags were located.  By 12:30 this morning the rotting clothing was put away and clean clothes put on, just to see what it felt like.  It felt good, we both agreed—as did shampooed hair, a comb, deodorant, and, in Roger’s case, a shave.

            After a few hours’ sleep, we were delivered this morning with our baggage to the airport to claim our Hertz rental car for the trip to the Andes.   Only, no one at the airport could tell us how to find the Hertz counter—or any other rental car counter, for that matter.  Not the security guards, not the information booth people, not the taxicab drivers (naturally).  We checked the domestic arrivals terminal.  Then we checked the international arrivals terminal, then the entire second floor of the airport.  Still, no rental car counters.  Finally we asked person number 32, who said we had to go back into a place near the baggage area, where only deplaning passengers can see the rental car counters.  Makes a lot of sense, yes?

            Finally, we left the airport at 11:30 after a long lecture from the Hertz people about speed limits, keeping the lights on at all times, and the three different locations for the spare tire and jack combination in case we had a flat.  We had detailed written directions from last night's B&B host to get us out of this city of 9 million and onto the unnumbered highway to Tarma in the Andes Mountains.  Now, Google Maps had told us the trip would take 4 hours.  The folks on TripAdvisor said it would take 6 or seven hours even though the distance is only about 140 miles.  We wish one of them had been correct.

            Following the directions, we turned right on La Marina Avenue and watched the signs for it to turn into Javier Prodo Avenue.  But it didn’t turn into Javier Prodo Avenue, and we found ourselves on a street with some other unpronounceable name.  Making an illegal U-turn, we went back to try to remedy the problem.   After inquiry of people on the street, we found that if we had kept going, La Marina eventually would really become Javier Prodo Avenue. 

           When the street finally became Javier Prodo, we began to look for an overpass, where we were told to take a right on El Trebol.  At the first big overpass, there was no sign for El Trebol.   Roger said we should just hire a cab driver to lead us out of Lima, but that would cost $20.00 and I was unwilling to pay my half.  So we stopped to make another inquiry, and were told to go back to the overpass and turn right and we would be on El Trebol.

            Following the latest directions, we found ourselves on a limited access highway heading back in exactly the opposite direction from where we had been heading for the past hour.  Roger said we should hire a cab driver to lead us out of Lima, but I said that would cost too much.

            When we reached the exit for the airport around 1:00, near where we had begun our journey, we called our B&B host, who told us to turn around and go back down the highway, through the toll booth to the next exit past it, get off, and get back on heading back north.  Then, just past the toll both, take the first exit to the right, which was Evitomiento.  From there we were directed to turn off on Ramiro Pridle Avenue, then onto Carretera Centrol, and we would be on our way to Tarma.  We got off and headed back south, into a massive traffic jam, which took us another hour heading back toward the toll booth.  I was driving and becoming just a tad tense with the 5-speed manual transmission, which had not made it out of first gear on this entire stretch.   Roger said we should hire a cab driver to lead us out of Lima.  I ignored him.

            When I was near giving up hope, Roger saw an exit going off to the right with the name Evitomiento.  As he screamed “Get off here!”, I swerved across two lanes of traffic and exited to the west.  Only, we were supposed to be heading east, and this was another limited access highway.  It took a while, but finally we exited and were heading back east.  We came to a fork where Roger had said we needed to go east, argued loudly about which road to take, and then took the wrong one, onto still another limited access highway.  Roger said go this way, then go that way;  I swerved left and right, and then Roger said we should hire a cab driver to lead us out of Lima.  Even though I am absolutely convinced he put me through all this to wear me down, I immediately agreed.

            We pulled over, Roger hailed a cab, I put my $10.00 In the pot, and the driver led us to the outskirts of Lima.  By now it was 3:00 in the afternoon.  We had taken 3.5 hours to get out of Lima, not counting the rental car ordeal.

            We will not trouble you with the details of the next 7 hours of driving up a winding mountain road and over a mountain pass nearly 16000 feet above sea level (100 feet higher than Mont Blanc, highest mountain in Europe), past several hundred slow-moving trucks on a thousand blind curves, and to our final destination for three nights, Hacienda La Florida.  We will not trouble you, because we are too exhausted at 10:00 at night to trouble you.

Charlie and Roger

©2013