My journey home - such fun!

Well, I'm finally back in the UK and pretty well settled into my lovely new house, nice and close to sea level once again.

Although I loved my time in Peru, the worst part was the international travel just to get there and back, and the fact that I hate to fly with a passion doesn't help this very much. Must say, overall I had a pretty traumatic journey home; first I lost my beautiful hat in Cusco airport (sob!), and the planes got progresssively later and later... Didn't sleep at all in Lima, as was there overnight and was scared that a scary person would rob me - ended up with Jose from Papa Johns telling me how clever I was for about an hour, and eating Big Macs and pizzas all night long. And it's kinda weird how you have to pay $25 just to leave the country...

Then spent twice as long sitting in Santiago airport than I thought I would (at least I got a free meal and a bottle of cheap gin - boredom shopping), but from the little I saw of the country Chile looks beautiful, must go back to have a proper look one day. Flight to Lima was awful, as spent 13 hours feeling really ill with awful stomach cramps, and had to watch Miss Congeniality 2 (what were they thinking?!?) and something awful with Tommy Lee Jones and cheerleaders (what was I thinking?!?).

Once I finally arrived at Madrid, the had lost my bag - again!!! What is with this place?!? Is it like the Bermuda Triangle for blue Karrimor rucksacks??? So I was really late at this point, spent ages making reports about my bag, running around the most badly designed airport in the world to find the correct check-in desk, to wait for about 45 minutes while the people at the desk had a little chat. Then once I finally reached the front of the queue I was told off for being late, "it says check-in at 3:25 here, and it's now 5:45," at which point I started sobbing from exhaustion, fed-up-ness, and worry that I'd miss my flight. This scared the little Spanish man, who ran off to return 5 minutes later with a Club Class British Airways ticket for me. How nice.

Then I had to run through the terminal (to the other end of the airport again) as I was told my flight was boarding, only to be made to wait for another half an hour while more faffing and chatting went on among the staff. Was quite confused when I was handed a plastic bag with a Happy Shopper style ham sandwich and an orange as I got on the plane (found out about the BA food strike thingy later), but was grinning the whole time at all the English accents around me, and was jumping around in my nice big leather seat with extra leg room by the time we flew over the south coast.

Turns out my bag was once again left to languish in Madrid Airport for a while, but luckily this time they found it in less than a week and I picked it up the next day, 5 minutes after it had been flown in.

So, that was the end of my summer in Peru. Now to get down to some academic stylee work...