An uneventful 5 ½ hour flight from Miami to Lima saw us arriving at Jorge Chavez International Airport.
A big change since my last time into Lima, about 8 years ago, today the airport has numerous jet bridges, many food courts , restaurants, bars and café’s, just about what you would expect to see back in the States.
Cleared customs in record time, and upon exciting the immigration area we found our taxi driver that the Hotel had sent for us. Off we went for a short night in Lima before we headed to Cusco the next morning.
The taxi was a little small and would only hold 2 suitcases in the trunk and the 3rd went between my wife and son in the rear, myself up front.
I had a lively conversation with the driver as I caught up with all the changes in Peru over the last 8 years, I had flown well over 50 flights over the years to Lima and have spent sometime getting to know the city. Friday night in Lima saw quite a bit of traffic on the road, as we neared the area of the hotel the driver took some smaller roads to avoid the traffic.
Bam, sound of breaking glass, screaming from the back seat, commotion, as I turned I saw that someone had broken the car window on my wife side of the car, a man was reaching in trying to grab a carryall bag my wife had on her lap. I call it her grandma bag, nothing really of value, except cosmetics, a IPOD and contact lens stuff. My wife now shaken had had her arms woven through the straps, my son reached over and grab the bag with one hand and was punching the thief, I from the front seat had gotten a hold of the bag. The thief ended up giving up, an ran off empty handed.
Arriving at the hotel 5 minutes later , shaken and scared we found that all three of us had been cut from the glass of the window, nothing serious, but enough to add to the tension and fright.
The hotel was nice, just one block from the main square, the rooms were very nice, clean and comfortable, not bad for $64.00 a night. A little noisy from street traffic and being a Friday night, an our encounter with the street thief we saw very little sleep that night.
Talking it over in the morning at breakfast, we realized we had let our guard down, Lima was a major Latin America city, as with any major city there is going to be crime, I think our first mistake was getting into such a small car where we were restricted in movement, second I was talking with the driver , not paying attention to the surrounding area I had let him go down a smaller side street, third, my wife should not have had the bag sitting on her lap, even though there was nothing of value, it should not have been in plain sight from the street. I had thought maybe her passport was in that bag, now knowing there really was nothing of value, we should not have fought off the intruder, we should have let him taken the bag since the possibility of him having a gun and us fighting him off could have ended the situation differently.
Myself being robed over the last 20 some years in place like Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires and New York, I should have not let my guard down, I should have been a little more aware of our environment and the surrounding area as we were traveling out of our comfort zone.
On the ride back to the airport, we arranged for a van taxi which only added $10.00 dollars to the fare, yet gave us a much more comfortable ride, we were not restricted in our movement and sitting higher, it was not possible for people to look right in and see what we had. The ride back to the airport went uneventful.
Next , Lima to Cusco.
