We left Heathrow at 7.25am on 22 August for Madrid by the Iberia, and then changed plane to Lima.  We arrived at Lima at 17.35 on the same day.  Time difference is 6 hours.

Our day to Lima got longer as we had to be at the airport 2 and a half hours to 3 hours before the departure time due to security alert which had been enforced less than 2 weeks before.  I was relieved to be able to take camera and electronic items to the cabin with us, although we were still not allowed to take liquid with us.

The distance between Madrid and Lima is a little bit shorter than the one between Madrid and Narita.

@@@@@@

We understood that Mr Manolo Arias from PeruFlora was going to meet us at the airport in Lima with a flag which had my name on, but we couldn’t find one.

‘Where is he?  I can’t find him’, I was looking around the flags with other people’s names on one by one.  Whilst I was looking for MY flag, people waiting for somebody else were looking at me and wondered if I was the one who they wanted.  Once they decided I wasn’t, they returned to their conversation with their friends.  It was somehow a tense moment of an odd mixture of curiosity and expectation.

@@@@@@

Eventually we met Manolo and introduced ourselves.  He drove us to his house.  Once we stopped with the traffic light, there came people who were selling sweets, souvenirs and so forth.

We got tired with our long journey from London so we went to bed early without evening meal on the day.