Daily Archives: February 27, 2010

It’s a long and winding road……Even though we’ve only been driving for 5 days, it seems like forever.  And there’s nothing we needed as much as a rest day here in this lovely hotel in the village of Concepcion, 20 minutes north of Huancayo.

The only part of our plans that has come to fruition is that we did indeed drive north out of Lima on February 16.  That we were able to do this took many miracles and much assistance from a gracious warehouse manager at the customs docks in Callao (Lima’s port), who faced down the placid, “who cares about you” stonewalling of our assigned custom’s broker as he held our car papers hostage for 4 hours.  Triumphantly securing the last stamps on our carnet at 7pm, we retrieved Brunhilde from the farthest corner of the enormous port warehouse yard, where she sat huddled and covered with black grime.  Hand-scribbled map in hand, we wove our way through Lima’s dark streets, doing pretty darn well until we got muddled around one too many ceremonial plazas.  Was this 2 de Mayo?   San Martin?   And how could we tell?    When I asked a policeman for directions, he and his troops jumped in their patrol car and gave us a full-sirens, flashing lights escort to our hotel.   From that moment on, we’ve thought quite highly of Peru’s police, except for one unfortunate encounter the next morning.

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