Lima and Buttevant

Not too dissimilar to my last big trek in Colombia, I woke up in bed the morning after the post-trek celebrations with my head spinning and a serious thirst for water. I had once again wisely decided to treat myself to a fancy private room to recover. Besides the effect of the hangover, I was feeling a little down for other reasons - I just had a great four days on the Inca Trail, where I had good company and made some new friends, but now they were all gone. They were all on a short holiday break, and were heading back home this day or the next. I was on my own again.

After finding somewhere to refuel with food, I wandered through Christmas-themed Cuzco in a melancholic hungover state, hitting up Starbucks on the main square for some caffeine and wifi to help decide where I would go next. It was the Christmas songs in Starbucks that got me. The cycle of making new friends and then saying goodbye and having to start all over again had become tiresome. I knew I wasn't enjoying solo travelling as much as the last time I did it in Asia. I also knew that when I was living in Sydney, Christmas was the one time of the year where I would feel homesick, and now it was happening again, in South America. I decided to head home to Ireland for Christmas.

My mood immediately lifted after booking my flights. I was going to head to Lima first for a couple of days, then make the long journey home. I decided to tell no-one and surprise them - as some of you know well, I like surprising people. Now I couldn't wait to get home.

First there was Lima to check out though. I flew the next morning, and checked into an old grotty hotel in the historic centre.

I had heard Lima was just a big dirty city, but the historic centre surprised me, it was quite nice, with some big colonial plazas typical of the region. It also got me excited about going home - my hotel was close to the main pedestrian shopping street, full of locals going about their Christmas shopping. It's amazing how on the other side of the world, people are doing the exact same things in the build-up to Christmas. The Plaza de Armas, the main square, was also dotted with Christmas trees and other decorations, lit up in lights, just like you'd see back home.

I checked off two Peru experiences in one having a dinner of ceviche (spicy raw fish with lemon - delicious) with a couple of tasty pisco sours, the famous Peruvian cocktail. Walking back towards my hotel, I stumbled across a local street concert, with salsa rhythms and (what I think was) indigenous dancing, which was a nice bonus. Before retiring for the night I wandered over to the stage set up at one end of the plaza. A bunch of nuns doing a soundcheck was what caught my eye, and after a long long wait (they were really picky with the sound check these nuns), they kicked-off into what sounded like Christ-rock in Spanish. They had a bass, two electric guitars, a keyboard, a drummer, and additional instruments on other songs - they weren't messing about. It was the best nun rock concert I've ever been to.

The next morning, of my last day before departing for Ireland, after watching a Manchester United match in bed (this was becoming a theme of my travels), I dedicated the rest of the day to a couple of museums. The Museum of Ethnology and Archaeology was pretty decent, with good information on the plethora of pre-Inca cultures that existed in Peru. I was looking forward to the next one though - I had been told that the Museu Larco was a must see.

I got sidetracked on the 15 minute walk there by a microbrewery that happened to be on the way. In the end the 15 minute walk took about 3 hours, but I got to Museu Larco (which was open until late) in good spirits. It was worth the journey there, with some superb artifacts, excellently described and presented - one of the best museums I'd been to in South America (and the only one I visited half-cut).

My flight was due to depart Lima at 2am (bloody Lima airport schedule), so even after finishing the museum at 9pm I still had plenty of time to kill. I went to the attached fancy restaurant to have a nice meal before 24 hours of airline food. They happened to have wifi in the restaurant, and I happened to check my email while waiting for my food. I was flying with Delta Airlines, and they had happened to email me saying my flight was cancelled, and they were trying to re-book me on another flight. Goddammit. Soon after I got another email with an updated itinerary, flying via Miami and Heathrow, leaving the next morning but arriving in Dublin just a couple of hours later. Not too bad.

After spending an extra night in the same hotel, off I went in an excited mood in an Uber to the airport to start the long journey home. When I reached the check-in counter for the rescheduled, non-Delta airlines flight, no booking existed. Delta had messed it up somehow, and their helpline was jammed because of the incident at Atlanta (which is why my original flight was cancelled). With no other options available, I had to book an alternative flight home via Air France and Paris, and try to get a refund off Delta later. So I had the rest of the day to hang out once again at Jorge Chavez International, the same airport I had spent the night at a week or so beforehand.

After three flights and two buses, I sneaked around in the 10pm darkness to the backdoor of my family home. After surprising my brother and mother, I saved the biggest shock for my father. In true Hynes tradition, my mother told him that the shower was leaking. I hid in the shower, and jumped out screaming when he approached, frightening the shite out of him. That alone made the long journey worth it.

The Christmas "break" was a great way to recharge the batteries, and work out what I was going to do with the remaining time of my sabbatical. Chile, Easter Island, Antarctica and Mexico was the new plan. After ten quick but busy days catching up with family, it was time to hit the road again.

More photos from Lima