Day 30: Off to Peru! (Antigua to Lima)

Today is the day I flew to Peru!!! It will be my 14th country, my 3rd continent, and my first time in the southern hemisphere.

I got up at 3:30am to catch my 4am airport shuttle. Upon arriving at the airport in Guatemala city, the airport was much smaller than I expected. The whole international terminal was probably smaller than Alaska Air's section of SeaTac. I went through security then immigration no problem. (Except I hated giving up my water bottle since I can't fill it up I'll have to buy new ones the whole trip which I hate.) Afterwards I was at my gate by about 6:30am. Now I had two hours to kill before boarding which I passed with a movir I had downloaded on Netflix to watch. One thing I noticed while waiting is that I was freeeeezzziiinnngggg!! It was the first time I had been in air conditioning since I arrived in Belize. No hostel, restaurant, or other facility has had it (beside from maybe 1 or 2 of those van rides?) Boarding time came and went, and then departure time came and went and we were all still sitting in the terminal. I asked the man what would happen if I missed my connecting flight because I only had a 40mon layover. He said "no to worry, only 7min late." Yeah right. It was already like 10min past departure time and we had yet to board. I figure by this time there's nothing I can do, so I'll just figure it out when I get to San Jose, Costa Rica. Finally we boarded, and made it to Costa Rica. Upon landing I asked the lady next to me if I could please get put because I had 20min to catch my next flight. She promptly said "oh, you should have told me! We could have let you off the plane first!" Too late now. She informed the flight attendant in Spanish who then let me off first. But that didn't matter because we were on the tarmac and boarded a bus which waited for the entire plane to get on. Now I have 10min to catch my flight. I asked the men working at the airport which gate. Once we arrive at the terminal he points up the stairs and says terminal 16. I run up the stairs in a hurry only to come face to face with an army looking security man. He wonders why I'm all frantic and says I need to go through security AGAIN and dump my water AGAIN. I toss my water, put my stuff on the scanner belt, and walked through the metal detector. Only to get dinged thanks to my money belt. Go through again. Dinged. Third times the charm. Now I have 3min to catch my plane. I SPRINT THROUGH THE AIRPORT LIKE A CRAZY PERSON and make it to the gate. Only to find out that I had made it on time, but my luggage did not. The man behind the counter informed me that they had a direct flight leaving in a few hours and he would put me on that. (I was supposed to fly to San Salvador, El Salvador, then to Lima, Peru. I had seen the direct flight from Costa Rica but it was like $50 more and the same travel time. So this actually worked out in my favor.) He was also kind enough to give me a $14   food voucher which I used to buy some miso soup. The first flavor I had tasted in three days; it was delicious.

The flight from San Jose to Lima had no problems. They even fed us! I arrived in Lima sometime around 8pm, met my driver, and arrived at the dragonfly hostel sometime around 9 I'm guessing. (I didn't paid much attention to the time after I caught my flight.) I am exhausted from 16 hours of travel so I wanted to go straight bed. However, I am meeting my dad at 730 tomorrow morning at our hotel, so instead I went down the block to make sure I knew where it was for in the morning. Now, I am going to bed.