Arrival

We're safely in Lima, after a long but mostly uneventful day via Denver and Atlanta. I read up most of Mario Vargas Llosa's Death in the Andes, played a couple rounds of trivia, and watched "The Hurt Locker" (good) and "The Men Who Stare at Goats" (mostly incoherent, but amusing) as well as a bunch of old Offices and 30 Rocks. Three minor travel crises already: one person walking off with someone else's passport (nearly stranding the latter in Salt Lake), one person trying to leave a boarding pass at currency exchange, and one person walking off with someone else's bag in Lima (which we'll have to fix tomorrow). Students are fired up to be here and excited to get out and see what needs to be seen. We're nicely housed in La Paz Apart in Miraflores - landed at about midnight, worked our way through a long but fairly fast customs and immigration line, and piled into three vans provided by the hotel; drove south along the coast, with big white rollers coming in under a hazy sky. Tomorrow we head off to historic central Lima with our guides from KaySAC - we'll see the Plaza de Armas, Lima Cathedral, San Francisco church complex, including catacombs and Inquisition museum, and lunch at the Bolivar Hotel, reputed birthplace of the Pisco Sour.