June 13, 2025 to June 15, 2025
Day 31, 32 & 33: The End
We got a much needed night of sleep and enjoyed a delicious free hotel buffet breakfast where we got coffee, fruit (peeled of course), yogurt, granola, chocolate bread, and we ordered an omelette, pancakes and waffles to share. After breakfast, we wandered around running some errands and exploring town. We wanted sneakers–our sandals are very lightweight and small but have absolutely no support which makes them hard to walk far distances in. We went to a shoe store nearby and got shoes. As two relatively tall women (we are both 5 feet 9 inches), we have larger feet. Megan wears a size 12 or 13 women's and always buys men’s shoes anyways so she had no problem finding mens sneakers that fit. Erin has a size 10 or 11 women's shoe and very narrow fit, so she had a harder time finding shoes because it turns out shoe stores in Peru only sell up to a 9.5 women's shoe size! This makes sense given that most women around here have seemed much shorter in height than both of us. Alas, she got some wide mens shoes that will do the job for now and we immediately put the shoes on as we headed off for our next adventure–buying more packing material and picking up our tandem at the bus station. We headed to the largest hardware store we were told about, which also happened to be right near the bus station and did some shopping. We got bubble wrap, plastic wrap, some foam like material and more packing tape. We then headed over to the bus station. We saw the bus arrive and as they unloaded the luggage–we saw our bicycle!
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Thank goodness! We thought we could just pick it up like normal luggage getting off the bus, but because it was supposed to be cargo, they sent it all the way around the building to the cargo loading area and told us to go to the people at the cargo desk. There was also some indication that the number on our receipt didn’t match the number on the box. We went and showed the receipt we were given to the people at the desk. They didn’t speak English so there was limited communication, but we could tell that the number on our receipt didn’t seem right–it didn’t match a box. We knew which box was ours, but they couldn’t give us the box because the numbers didn’t match. After a lot of time and a woman calling on the phone to the Abancay station, they eventually gave us the bike. Woohoo! We called an uber for our bike and a second Uber for us since we don’t all fit in one and headed back to the hotel. Here, we disassembled the bike even more, and packed it up in one box and both our wheels in another. After this operation, we headed out for a run on the famed Miraflores boardwalk. We ended up on the wrong boardwalk, but we got to go right along the coast which was nice. Later that night, we went to dinner again–this time wanting to try the classic Peruvian dish of Lomo saltado, basically a beef stir fry. We had more cakes and ice cream for dessert.
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The following day, we enjoyed another round of hotel breakfast and knew that we had nearly a whole day to be tourists and enjoy Miraflores. Erin went for a run along the correct boardwalk this morning, while Megan enjoyed a walk along the boardwalk.
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We shopped at some of the local markets, picking up a wedding gift for Megan’s Dad who is getting married next week. We then showered, checked out of our hotel and headed off for some luxury pampering-a couples massage! It was glorious. At the end of massage, we heard a chime on our phones and learned that our flight out of Lima that night was being delayed–oh no! It was looking like it might be hard to make our connection. We tried to get on an earlier flight, but there was only one seat left so we just stuck with our original flight. With nothing else to be done, we resumed our tourist activities for the day, getting a cappuccino, walking to the chocolate museum, wandering local markets, buying a pillowcase and some magnets for souvenirs. We went out to Indian food before heading to the airport. We gave ourselves plenty of time at the Lima airport since there was a new terminal recently built and we have a tandem bike. Our flight was still getting delayed and there were no good options for moving our second flight. We decided to risk it and stay on the original flight. Fortunately, American Airlines were very nice about accepting our tandem bike and there were no issues there. We would definitely fly American again with a tandem! We waited for over an hour in the security line at the Lima airport because the screening machines kept breaking. We then waited for maybe another hour in the passport control line. Luckily, we had plenty of time before our delayed flight. We were supposed to leave around 11:45pm, but around 2am we finally ended up taking off. Our connection was going to be very tight. We landed in Miami the following morning and ran as fast as we could to go through immigration, pick up our bags, go through customs and recheck our bags and go through security again. We had prepacked our carry-on bags to optimize our running ability. Those running shoes we bought sure were coming in handy! Fortunately, we just barely made our connection and we headed off to Denver! Erin’s aunt and uncle picked us up at the airport, decked out in matching rainbow tie-dye t-shirts (they had gone to World Pride in DC the prior weekend) with celebratory balloons, a pride flag, a luggage cart at the ready and food waiting for us.
They had just made fresh oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies and brought us a bowl of fresh berries and a big bowl of peanut chicken salad. We got our bike and wheels, which magically somehow made the connection too and headed back to Boulder where we were greeted by our roommate who had more delicious bread pudding and a yummy salad for us.
We are happy to be back home and are still processing this amazing adventure. We feel fortunate to have had the time to take a month off and spend it together, riding our bike, exploring new places. This blog will come to an end for now, but we are planning on riding the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR) starting August 1 and we plan to blog in a similar style throughout that journey. If you are interested in following along, please do! Thanks for sharing this wonderful journey with us. There were many times when we would read the supportive comments out loud to one another when there were hard days. The support from afar meant a lot. Posting this blog kept us accountable to reflect upon each day and we are so happy to have it to go back to. Happy adventures to everyone!
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