72 hours in Lima, Peru

Lima at night as seen from the Cristo del Pacifico monument

It seems that my stays in places are becoming shorter and shorter. Seventy-two hours is just three days, yet it seems as if I spent a week or longer in Lima. It was a nutty trip and especially in the beginning extremely stressful. From the time that I had been assigned to work the BMX Pan-American Continental Championships sometime this spring, there had been issues. First the race was postponed (thanks to COVID) from the spring to mid-November. Easy enough. Then the new dates were finally set and I made my travel arrangements, but a few weeks later the date of the race was moved forward by a day, to Saturday, November 13. OK, I had built in the usual safety margin and my flight was supposed to leave on Thursday, November 11 with an arrival at 1;00 a.m. on Friday. Mind you, all this came right on the heels of my trip to New York.

Finish line of the Lima BMX track, with the Pacific on the horizon

I had been looking forward to linking up in DFW with my friend and colleague Linda, from Portland, as we were scheduled to work together. We had coordinated our flights and for several weeks been looking forward to some quality Admirals Club time in Dallas. And then things started to melt down. On that Thursday, three of American Airlines' flights between Lubbock and Dallas were delayed by hours—for example the 5 a.m. departure was not going to leave until after 4 p.m.! My departing flight shortly after noon was first delayed by an hour or so. Thankfully I received the text message before I left for the airport. At that point I still thought that I had a safe margin of error to make my flight to Lima, but that soon changed when cascading text messages alerted me to new departure times, later and later.

Opening ceremonies of the 2021 BMX Pan-American Championships,
with speeches and performances

When I called the Executive Platinum desk, a helpful person snagged the one remaining First Class seat on one of the earlier (but delayed) flights and I was hopeful to still make it in time to catch the 5:15 p.m. flight to Lima—the one and only flight from Dallas to Peru. That hope evaporated soon enough when another text alerted me that my new flight had been pushed back and then cancelled. Well, at least I hadn't gone out to the airport! And so I called reservations again and got rebooked for the same flights on Friday, arriving only hours before the race. Good thing that Linda by now was on the way to Lima and would take over for me.

Or so we thought.

The time difference between Lubbock and Lima is one hour, with Lima being in the same time zone as our East Coast. I was just going to bed just a little after midnight when I saw a message flashing across the screen of my cell, which at that point was already muted. It was Linda, who had landed in Lima early. She was in a real pickle: Her passport had only a few months left before its expiration, and Peruvian border personnel would not let her into the country. She had crappy internet coverage and was in the transit area of the Lima airport and couldn't access certain cloud-based documents that might be helpful in convincing immigration officers to make an exception. I called the race organizer (by now it was at least 1:30 a.m. in Lima), hoping that as President of the Peruvian cycling federation he might know somebody who could intervene. I tried to be supportive and positive in my messages to Linda and honestly kept holding out hope that the situation would be resolved. At least enough time had passed by now that Linda couldn't be put on the return flight to Dallas.

Or so we thought.

I finally fell asleep. At about 4 a.m. I woke up and checked my phone. The message was less a cry for help than the expression of sheer desperation and resignation: "They're sending me back ... on a 6 a.m. flight to Miami ... I feel awful about it." Holy shit! I couldn't believe it! This is the kind of stuff that happens in movies, not in real life. Linda, who is a Norwegian citizen who has the so-called US "green card" had not been able to renew her (Norwegian) passport because of COVID, and now she was being sent back to Miami! The remaining hope now was that I would actually be able to fly out a few hours later and make it to Lima before the event.

As you know, I can't write about the details of my work, and so I can't tell you about the messages that went back and forth between three continents. Plans were changed and fingers were crossed, and when my new (initial) flight once again was delayed by almost 45 minutes my heart started to sink. But the big meltdown (caused the day before by similar circumstances that had led AA to cancelling more than 3,000 flights a few weeks ago, namely a total staffing fiasco) didn't materialize. I made it to Dallas with time to spare to even enjoy some lounge time. Eventually I left in a comfortable lie-flat seat for Lima. I arrived pretty much on time, hailed a taxi, and was taken to the Dazzler by Wyndham where a room had been reserved for me. It was about 2:30 a.m. before I finally hit the rack. If you think my life is glamourous, well, that's not always the case.

About six hours later, a remise waited for me to take me to the race venue, located right on the wide, sandy strip of beach that stretches for miles and miles north and south. The opening ceremonies for the 2021 BMX Pan-American Continental Championships were just an hour away! What followed was a rather stressful day that required a lot of thinking and doing and guiding and—at times—wanting to pull my hair out. I was one of the last people to leave the venue as I had to wait for my driver to pick me up, and it was close to 8 p.m. when I  finally got back in the hotel, ready to finish the day's work. Man, that was a tough one!

Because of the change in dates from Sunday to Saturday I had two days of freedom. I had checked ahead of time whether Lima might have a bike share system, and so I had brought a helmet and my navigation cell phone with the Locus app. Lima is a city of more than 11 million inhabitants, and the race had taken place in the affluent and beautiful Miraflores section of this huge city—and that is the only part of Lima that has the City Bikes. While a day-pass to use a similar bike share system in New York will set you back $15, Lima charges just a little bit more than $1 for 24-hour access to unlimited 30-minute rides. It's hard to find a better transportation deal.

Lima's bike share program has about 500 bikes and approximately 50 stations, most of them maybe half a mile from the next, if not closer. An app allows you to find stations, displays your personnel code to unlock bicycles, and checks whether a station has free spaces to park your bike. In other words, it works like other such programs all around the world. The heavy, tank-like bikes ride like e-bikes that don't have a motor; in other words, they are real pigs! But most of them are in fairly good shape, and for noodling around town they are just right. Twice I had problems when I returned a bike to a station and the bike would not dock properly. But overall, it all worked fine.

While Saturday the clouds had never broken up, on Sunday the skies cleared around noon and Miraflores (one of Lima's most affluent districts) showed itself from its prettiest side. For a city where it never rains (!) Lima is amazingly green. Yes, you read it right: It never rains. All the moisture that Lima receives comes from a type of heavy dew. The frigid Humboldt Current, which transports Antarctic waters all the way along the west coast of South and Central America all the way up to beyond San Francisco is the culprit. Ever wonder why San Francisco has such cool temperatures and so much fog? Blame the Humboldt Current. So, all the parks and trees rely on a healthy dose of (manual) irrigation with water that is piped in from reservoirs in the lower Andes. Pretty fascinating.

Miraflores' wealth is easily recognized when you look at the modern high-rise hotels, fancy shops, and upscale villas. The view from all those fancy apartment complexes overlooking the Pacific can't be cheap. All along the 100-meter drop-off from Miraflores to the coastal strip pedestrian walkways, bike paths, and sheer endless parks make it possible for the locals to enjoy life. The drop-off is unlike anything I have ever seen; natural erosion from the endless waves and the occasional tsunami has eaten into the sandy soil and the "cliffs" are now secured with netting that is to protect the little bit of vegetation that grows here. Several roads lead down to the coastal promenade and the beaches. Surfers claim the spots with the best waves, and there are piers and sport facilities galore. 

Sunday evening, the organizer, Gustavo, invited me and UCI commissaire José from Colombia to a fancy seafood dinner in his favorite restaurant. OK, so sometimes my life is indeed glamorous... 😉 The three of us had a wonderful evening, which was not only a function of the two amazing pisco sours (size catédral, because they were pretty damn large) but also thanks to having three down-to-earth table companions from three different countries talking about their lives and their passion for the sport. After dinner we dropped off José at the hotel since he had an early flight back to Bogotá, and then Gustavo showed me what the city looks like at night from the Cristo del Pacifico monument in the Chorillos neighborhood. Unforgettable.

My return flight to the US was not going to depart Lima until 2:45 a.m. Tuesday morning, so I had another day for sightseeing on Monday. In the morning I paid a visit to an archaeological site, the Huaca Pucllana, less than a mile from my hotel. I had seen these ruins on my bike excursion the day before, but it had been too late to pay a visit. I had been wondering what this huge mound of what looked like adobe bricks could be, and a bit of research made clear that I had to pay it a visit. I have seen lots of ruins in my life, but never have I seen a 1,500-year-old complex built out of essentially mud. But remember, it doesn't rain in Lima! Actually, there's not all that much to see aside from this monstrously big adobe mound that was built by the original inhabitants of the area, the Lima People. Later, the Wari displaced the Lima and eventually the site was abandoned after serving as a public, administrative, and religious center for many centuries. Numerous other huacas exist in the region.

The latter info I received during the afternoon, which I spent with Gino, a bright 47-year-old who could easily be mistaken for being not a day older than 30. Gino had assisted me in my work on Saturday, and he wanted to show me around. Together we went to the center of Lima proper, the part where the government palace, large squares, and cathedrals are located. It was all a whirlwind tour, much of it stuck in stop-and-go traffic, some of it on foot after we were able to park Gino's car so we could take a quick walk through the pedestrian areas. I found the wooden balconies especially impressive.

I was reminded of Madrid, Mexico City, and numerous Latin American capitals as the architecture is unmistakable. The streets were full of people, all of them wearing masks (obligatory when outside, even on the beach or riding a bike) and going about their lives, Cars were honking incessantly, as if that could speed up the traffic. Like in so many other places that I have visited south of the border, long lines of patiently waiting people were formed outside of the entrances of banks and cell phone stores. While sightseeing Gino told me his life story, and I told him mine—and we realized that there were quite a few similarities. Maybe that's why we had found each other so likable.

Gino learned the appropriate term for Stella Artois, Lawnmower Beer

My new friends, Gino and Romina

We closed down the day and my stay in Lima with a visit to the Dazzler's outdoors hotel bar, where we were joined by Romina, who also had been part of Saturday's crew. Despite the fact that her English can't compare to Gino's the three of us had quite an animated conversation going. The final IPAs by Barbarian brewery served as a fitting capstone to this fast and furious stay. At 8:00 p.m., Galileo, my remise driver showed up at the Dazzler as scheduled, and 50 minutes later he delivered me at Jorge Chavez International Airport. One last selfie with the gringo, and then the air transport system gobbled me up and spit me out in Lubbock at noon on Tuesday. Whew.

Maybe I'm just getting old, or possibly these past three weeks (back problems included) have just been a bit more than usual, but I feel pretty bushed even after a relaxed Wednesday. But maybe just like the slowly receding backpain the fatigue won't linger for too long. It's time to figure out what I'll do with the remaining six weeks of possible travel time in 2021—after all, I locked in my frequent flier status for yet another year with the trip's last hop to Lubbock, and now I can think about burning some miles!

Jürgen