Saturday April 5 - Lima and taking the bus to La Florida

This was a laid back sort of day.  Four more team members came in during the night: Jim and Marci from Portland, OR, and Mike and Sylvia from Philiadelphia area (they know each other and are traveling together on this trip, but are not a couple).  I had the light breakfast served by the hotel and worked on my classes.  Shortly thereafter more people arrived – sisters from Americus, GA, Deanna (an internal med doctor) and Valerie (a physical therapist).  Six of us went to Starbucks – surprisingly, they had no coffee.  Apparently there was some temporary issue with their plumbing.  So we had juice and some pastries, and got to know each other.  Finally, they got water and started serving coffee.  Checkout time at the hotel was noon, so we went back to the hotel and got our luggage out of our rooms.  Then we hung out until 2:00 when we walked to a Chinese restaurant for lunch – there were now nine volunteers, Monica and Zenon.  Beer, Inka Cola Soda, Coca Cola and a meal of noodle soup and four large entrees were shared and the total cost including a tip was 250 PS – less than $9.00 per person.

We walked back to the hotel, got our luggage and loaded into a van to take us to the local bus station – the Terminal de Cercanias de Lima.  We had to show our passports to get tickets which included assigned seats on the bus – our bus tickets were very much like boarding passes for flying – name, seat, passport number, routing, cost, etc.  We loaded our luggage and boarded just in time (only seconds to spare) with Monica and the nine of us (Xenon left us there and later drove to La Florida, after he met the rest of the group as they arrived at the airport).  We rode on a very nice bus operated by the Perubus company.

 It took us about three hours to get to Canete.  We then transferred to the small bus that would take us around for the rest of the week, another 30 minute ride to the camp where we will stay for the week.  Palabra de Vida (Word of Life) has a mission here – the camp is used as a retreat and conference center by their church, but also available for rent including meals and laundry.  We had dinner and then went to our rooms.  Mike G. and I are sharing one of four rooms in the men’s area.  Each room has space for twelve people on six bunk beds.  Our beds had sheets, a blanket and a pillow for us – nothing fancy, but more than adequate and it was just the two of us so we have all the space we need to spread out our stuff.

The rest of the group arrived late at the airport and then made the same trek by multiple buses here to camp and arrived a little before 4:00 a.m.  The group includes: Pam, a nursing director from Fort Wayne, IN, Debbie and Steve from Oakland, CA; Marcia works at Home Depot in Tyler, TX; Jean is a retired teacher from Bryn Mawr, PA; Mark is an engineer from Minnesota; and Mike, a retired school principal from Detroit.