Our group was the scheduled tone the first off the ship so we had to be down in the dining room by 5.50am.  I was up at 4.30am, got showered and dressed and carry on bags packed and then we headed downstairs to the International Cafe and had a coffee and pastry - not much else on offer that early and then into the dining room.  We disembarked - a nice easy process and didn't have to collect our big suitcases - they went straight to the airport.  

We were ushered into a big comfortable coach and proceeded to stay there for almost an hour.  There were meant to be 73 people in total doing this Machu Picchu section and they were missing three.  Eventually they discovered that two of them had to leave the ship earlier in the cruise due to a medical emergency.  My heart aches for them - so sad to be doing one of those once in a lifetime trip and have it fall in a heap.  The other person was single lady and they couldn't locate her on the ship and eventually we left and they said she might be able to catch us up at the airport.  I haven't asked to see whether she did or not - lots of new faces.  In fact as one lady commented -she couldn't believe that there wasn't a single person she'd seen on the ship on our tour.  We had dinner with one couple - Richard and Patti - farmers from Ohio and there are a couple of other faces I've seen around the ship.  There's also a fair few people who are walking really slow with sticks etc - not sure how they'll go but our guide Johan seems to reckon everyone will make it ok.

So the bus made the trip to Santiago - the port of San Antonio is I think nearly a two hour drive from Santiago.  We both snoozed a bit during the trip.  When we arrived in Santiago we had a tour of the city an couple of photo stops and then we went to the airport.  We're in two groups with two guides -Johan and a a strange name which I'll have to check.  It was a bit of an exercise getting 70 of us all checked in and through security and immigration but have to say our guides -and Princess - who send extra staff to the airpot to assist were fantastic.  Once we were all sorted we followed Johan to the Pacific Club VIP Salon - we all had access there - lovely spot with great food and drinks.  We passed a pleasant couple of hours in there - I got another blog update done then we headed up to our boarding gate.  Now Santiago is a big airport and I'm standing at the gate just waiting for Craig who's gone to the bathroom when a voice says 'Fancy meeting you here' - it was Janice Leggate - you may remember that small world event we had early in the cruise.  We'd seen her and David one other time on the ship and there they were again.  We said our farewells with a promise to look them up when we're next in Scotland.  

The flight to Lima was 3 and half hours and you had no say in the seating - we got a window and a middle in a row of 3 - poor Craig had to unhinge the joints when we finally arrived in Lima.  Our luggage came off pretty quickly but some of the others took a fair while.  Then it was on to another two coaches and about a 50 minute drive to our hotel.  Traffic in Lima is pretty crazy and it was a busy time of night.  We'd lost two hours during the flight so although it was just after 8pm when we arrived at the hotel - our bodies thought it was 10pm.  We got checked in - a painless process.  I have to say the organisation of this trip so far has been outstanding.  Then we had a buffet dinner - Johan had told us Pervian food was pretty special and this buffet was amazing.  Probably my favourite was the ceviche - oh my goodness it was amazing. But we were really flagging by this time.

So up to our room which was absolutely massive and gorgeous - we had to wait another twenty minutes or so until our luggage arrived and then I did a quick sort out for the morning, had a shower and oh my lord that bed was brilliant.  Another early morning coming up