Day 1: Saturday, 25th May 2002

The alarm went off at 4:00 am and we blearily got up; the minicab was due to take us to the airport at 4:45. An elderly man came to the door and we got into his equally-elderly Peugeot 605. He reversed down the road badly, narrowly missing cars parked either side. He then regaled us with stories of near-misses, the difficulties of staying awake in the early hours of the morning after a long shift, and how he had failed to fill up with petrol that day. He was a nervous driver and we quickly became very nervous passengers. He asked if he could stop for petrol. We agreed, as we preferred this to the running-out-of-petrol-and missing-the-plane scenario. We drove into the garage but could not fill up as the attendant was fast asleep at his desk. The driver tapped on the glass, and the attendant looked up – then promptly fell asleep again. Eventually he was roused and we set off. Following a series of narrow misses, hit curbs and at least one set of red lights shot, somehow we arrived at Heathrow Terminal 2 on time.

We were quickly through the check-in (travelling business class does has its privileges) and security and we made our way to the Iberia VIP lounge. It had very comfortable seats with vital free coffee and biscuits; and for Bruce there was an excellent vantage point to plane spot.

We were summoned to the 7:30 Iberia flight to Madrid (Boeing 757) and in two hours we were there and were sitting in their VIP lounge – very large and with everything you could need for the two hour wait including free internet access and even better plane spotting.

Soon we were getting on the Iberia Airbus 340-300 and settling into our very comfortable business class seats and we were given a glass of Cava before take off. Soon we were off on our 12-hour flight to Lima. It was uneventful and the films and food passed the time well enough, as did the Guardian and Telegraph crosswords.

Twelve hours later, 5:30pm local time. we landed at Lima airport and we were quickly out of the baggage hall and customs and were greeted with a friendly smiling face of Margarita the Travel Collection tour guide for the Lima stage of our holiday. We also met our fellow-travellers for the next 10 days. All seemed affable enough except for the young couple who had separated themselves away from the rest of us. Margarita showed us the way to our coach (our luggage having been whisked away by porters and loaded onto the coach for us) and we were soon travelling through the night streets of Lima. We had a confused impression of lights, casinos and little shops and brightly coloured minibuses.