Friday 12 October 2007

Jour 1 / Day 1 Le Marathon des airs

Voila, comme promis, nous sommes arrivées au Pérou et je commence le blog en langue française. Sorry for the non French speakers (or readers) but I promised my friends in France to write in French while we are in Perou but don’t worry, we haven´t forget you, Flo will do it in English…





Enfin, c’est le PEROU! Pari réussi, non sans quelques frayeurs car le passeport brunéien de Florence attire toujours bien des curiosités et interrogations. Aussi car, pour ceux qui n’ont pas suivi nos histoires, nous n’étions pas sur de pouvoir partir car Flo n’avait pas encore obtenu sa carte de séjour française (voir chapitre sur la Sicile pour détails)!
(Finally arrived in Peru. We won the bet and made it safe and sound. Although we were still worried about my Flo´s passport. It is always making the immigration officers a little bit suspicious. They've never seen such a beautiful passport before.. hahaha.. No, it's very rare that Bruneians travel this end of the world I guess. Plus we haven't settled our problem with the green card in France)







Bref, tout commence a LYON a 5h30 du matin, nous réussissons à obtenir les billets jusqu'à LIMA, nous étions très contents mais pas encore rassurés a 100% ! Après avoir circulé dans le labyrinthe de l’aéroport de Madrid, nous arrivons a la douane ou il y a plus de 100m de queue !
YES !!! On passe sans trop de problèmes, le plus dur est fait, pensons nous ! En route pour le Pérou, à 13h00, on s’envole donc pour Lima avec la compagnie espagnole IBERIA ! Ca sent le vol ennuyeux car pas d’écran perso !
(Anyways, we started out adventure at Lyon, 5h30 am. We managed to get out tickets until Lima. Yes! We were relieved but we were still unsure. We still have Spain to pass through as it's still Europe. After arriving in Madrid.. had a couple of hours to kill and we went around the airport trying to find our departure gate.. like a maze. We found it but first we have to pass through the immigration control.. yikes , our heart starts to pace faster as we were still unsure if theý'll let Flo leave the territory. What makes it worst is that we were in a 100m queue. Waiting with anticipation. Our turn... YES a STAMP to exit Madrid, Spain with no problem or hesitation. Ouf a relief. So, we’re free to FLY and 13 hours ahead of us before we reach Lima. The capital of Peru. We flew with IBERIA, and it was a pretty long flight. We got bored as we didn’t have the luxury of having a personal touch screen monitor in front of us.. Just like the flight we had when we were going to France (Emirates)
A 17h30, heure péruvienne, 2h30 heure française, nous atterrissons à Lima ! En effet, on a déjà eu meilleurs vols. Nous retrouvons la douane ou nous pensions, pour une fois, ne pas avoir de problèmes car Flo et moi devaient bénéficier de 90 jours dans le pays sans besoin de Visa ! L’officier part avec le passeport de Flo voir son chef ! Apres 15 minutes de discussion, elle revient, nous craignions le pire mais finalement elle tamponne. Seul petit hic, c’est que nous avons un tampon de 30jours seulement (on verra ca avec l’assoc) ! On récupère les bagages et on sort en vitesse ! Ca y est, nous y sommes ! Difficile à croire !!!
We arrived at Lima at 17h30, local Peru time (-6hrs French time and -13hrs Brunei time) For once we thought we shouldn’t have any problems with the immigration and we should have 90 days stay without visa. The officer went off with Flo’s passport.. again… to see her supervisor, we presume. After 15 mins, she returned and we thought of the worst but instead she stamped our passport. The only thing is that we only have 30 days. Anyways, we collected our bags.. AND the good news we got ALL of them.. Heard some rumours that lost baggages is something that happens fairly often.. sooo.. It’s hard to believe BUT we are HERE in Peru.

LIMA, 18h, il fait 15 degrés et la nuit commence à tomber ! Une odeur de crame règne sur la ville, bienvenu dans Lima avec ses 9 millions d’habitants et toute sa pollution !!!
Un taxi devait nous attendre a notre sortie pour nous mener jusqu'à la maison d’une amie d’une ancienne étudiante de Flo ! Nous sommes accueillis par un service de sécurité, homme en costard, téléphone portable collé a l’oreille. Il me dit que notre taxi est reparti car il n’avait pas vu notre avion dans la liste des arrivées ! Je comprends qu’une camionnette nous attend mais nous devons attendre quelques instants. C’est l’ami en question, Judith qui arrive en compagnie de toute sa famille.
Lima, 18h ..it is about 15 degres and the sun has already set. There is a strong burnt ordeur that covers the city, welcome to Lima, a population of 9 millions habitants.
At the exit, a taxi should be waiting for us to take us to a friend of a friend’s house. Dana whom I was teaching Malay has a friend, Judith in Lima and I was given her contact. Anyways we looked around for someone with our name. Saw this big, tall man wearing a suit (he looks more like in a security service), talking on a mobile phone holding our family name (FORAY).. so we went to him and said.. that’s US.. Then he explained that our taxi has left cos he didn’t see our flight on the arrival list. Anyways, we were brought to a Van and then he said that we needed to wait a few minutes for Judith and her family. Apparently, they went on holiday and they arrived at the same time as us too.. soi t all worked out well.. Fortunately.

Nous voila dans les embouteillages de Lima, 2h nous sera nécessaire pour faire 15 ou 20kms ! On découvre les énormes camions a l’américaine et les vieilles voitures du genre Mustang, coccinelle, etc. C’est pas le salon de l’auto mais plutôt celui des voitures antiques qui détiennent des records de pollution ! Cela nous permet de mieux faire connaissance avec nos hôtes d’un soir. Nous arrivons enfin a destination, il est 20h (donc 3h du mat en France, ca fait 23h qu’on voyage sans dormir). Nous sommes interdit de nous occuper de nos bagages et nous assistons a un défile de domestiques et autres agent de securite qui accourent a notre rencontre. Nous entrons dans un palais de 1200m2, c’est immense et la taille de notre chambre équivaut à un F2 en France.
Then we were stuck in a traffic jam for about 2 hours and we were only about 15-20kms away. Being stuck in the traffic, gave us the oppotunity to meet and speak to Judith and her family.. who kindly opened their home for us to stay a night. We finally reached our their home , it is 20h (3am France which means it has been 23hours since we started our travel and without sleep – ok, except for Flo.. She managed to doze off once in a while.) As we arrived, we didn’t have to worry about our bags, then we were ‘welcomed’ with some more security men and house maids. We enter this huge mansion… we were shown to the guest room which was very spacious.

Le lendemain matin, nous nous réveillons. Le drapeau de l’Union Européenne flotte devant la maison, un chauffeur en Mercedes et un garde du corps attendent pour accompagner Monsieur l’AMBASSADEUR de l’UE au travail et nous a la station de bus des pauvres !!!
Next morning, we woke up and looked out of the window.. we saw the European Union flag flying in front of the house, a chauffeur in a Mercedes and a bodyguard waiting for us to join the Ambassador of EU to send him to work and to send us to the Bus station. We had a good breakfast with the Ambassador too…I felt pretty out of place actually I don’t know how Johan felt.

Cette luxueuse arrivée nous a permis de recharger les batteries avant d’attaquer le JOUR 2 …
This luxurious arrival has allowed us to recharge our batterries and READY to start DAY 2

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