30/3 Up to Lima

We figured Oasis might be in town for the 8am sailings and we had a walk along the beach to the jetty but no such luck. We had settled down to have a farewell look at the dolphins when J suddenly noticed Bob near the jetty. It was almost time to head for the bus but we scurried down to the jetty and saw the last of the troops heading for the boat. That left Colin, who was clearly underjoyed to see us. He raised the subject of the luggage and let us in the back to collect it. It seemed that he might only have been aware of one piece and I would like to have been a mindreader as we extracted 4 bits from 3 lockers. We have just heard from Gordon that Colin didnt mention anything to them, which left them wondering where the missing piece had got to. Strange and a little sad.

By then it was time to pack and drag our expanded set of baggage down to a taxi. The little fellow in reception had remembered that we had told him that "Carlos" was in the largest bag and he pointed at it and said "Carlos". Nice chap.

We had front row upstairs seats again and the trip passed smoothly and painlessly. The landscape was pretty much plain desert the whole way, although there was a lot of (presumably irrigated) agriculture, huge areas of chicken farming under thatch, and a lot of new land developments.

They are lucky that their pretty smooth coastline has some high sandhills close to the water, which gave them some scope to landscape and introduce some terraced views. The lots would have had very impressive sea views. There were large areas of beach shelter and amenity fixtures, but no people. Strange for March when the weather is beautiful, its a Friday and only 100km from Lima the national capital. There were also areas of multiple restaurants, again with no sign of patronage.

We found our way to the hostel - a basically private home in a middle class residential neighbourhoode. A good choice of locations. All the facilities but no tourists around. We extrapolated Colin's demeanour by a factor of about 3 times to estimate Sam's and decided not to bother dropping in at the Oasis hotel. Lucky we couldnt get in there really.