Day 1: From Amsterdam to Lima

Knowing that at the end of the day I will be in Peru, to start my holiday in that country, makes waking up at the shockingly and horryfingly early time of 04:30h worthwhile after all.

A taxi is needed to take me to Schiphol Amsterdam Airport - at this time of night, the public transport system is as much asleep as I still am.

I am surprised not to find the extensive hand luggage control directly behind it - I shouldn't have been: it's just my unfamiliarity with the intercontinental flights, not knowing that I (or my backpack, to put it more precisely) will be turned inside out at the gate.

During the three hour waiting time, the first thing I did was going to the money exchange - the sign "60 different currencies available" made me give it a try. .. Bu the Peruvian Nuevo Sol must have been currency nr. 61, because they didn't have it - however, the more widely available dollars would do almost as well in Peru, according to the books...

In the plane, the next (nasty) surprise is waiting for me: the KLM Boeing 777 will take 12.5 hours to get from Amsterdam to Lima - four hours more than I had wrongly calculated at home (ok, I could have known better, had I looked it up in the atlas and calculated it from the distance - but I hadn't in my just four days between confirmation that I was going to Peru and the day of departure - so I used the travelguide, which gave a time difference two hours too few, and the booking guide, in which the arriveltime was misprinted another two hours too early).

During the last few hours of the flight, I could see the first breathtaking views of Peru though the thinning clouds: the bare mountains of the Andes.

Having left the airport an met my other travel companions, we set out in the bus to our hotel, where we were welcomed with a glass of the national cocktail: pisco sour. Not used to drinking alcohol and after being awake for 21 hours continuously, it sure made me sit still in my chair for the next half hour - afraid to tumble out of it at the tiniest of movement.

No matter how exhausted we were after all that time traveling, we still had to go out to buy some bottles of water. Luckily, there are a number of shops very near the hotel, where you can buy just about anything, including water. But that was really the last thing to do for that day: it had been long enough, and the next day would start early again.

So the first day of the holiday promised it would be quite some trip... We were not to be disappointed....