Day 1: Getting to Lima

Time for some Peru recaps! We were gone for a total of 11 days so I'm going to break it up a bit. Otherwise, it would just be ridiculously long.

On Thursday, March 20th, we took the 2:20am flight to Panama City, had a quick layover and then we were on our way to Lima. In order to get ourselves on track with the time, we took a sleeping pill on the first leg of the flight and we all pretty much passed our immediately. I've never slept so well on a flight. However, that stuff is strong! I basically remember nothing about our layover (even though I took some pictures while we were there) -- it's seriously like it never happened. Kinda scary actually.
[Another note about the flights: We used Copa Airlines, which I had never flown with prior to this trip. While the flights were fine, the food was the worst airline food I've ever experienced. And I have flown with many different carriers over the past few years. Just awful food. It would have been better if they hadn't have served anything and just asked passengers to bring their own food. I kid you not. :/ Something to keep in mind if you ever fly with Copa.]

We finally landed in Lima around 3pm. MoP had arranged for the Sheraton to send a van to pick us up and after grabbing our luggage, we were on our way to the hotel. To get there, we had to drive through a fairly "rough" area of town -- lots of unfinished construction, noise, pollution and general disarray. It was our first look at the poverty that a lot of Peruvians live with every day. Pretty shocking.

After arriving at the hotel, we checked in and got settled. The Sheraton Lima is a nice business hotel, but is located in a rough part of town. We walked around for a few minutes, but quickly headed back when it became clear that the museum next door was closed and there wasn't much else to do in the immediate area.

We then made our way to the restaurant in the hotel for an early dinner since we were all starving. Everyone used their free drink coupon to try a 'Pisco Sour', a local cocktail that is sorta like a margarita, which everyone paired with the lomo saltado. While the restuarant was not particularly inexpensive, the food was delicious, especially after the very unappetizing meals we had been served on our flights.

After dinner, we headed to the business lounge to check the basketball scores and email. At this point, it was around 8pm and seeing as how we needed to be up well before dawn the next day, it was time to call it a night.