I woke up at 6:00am the next morning, grabbed coffee in the Club Lounge before an hour and a half workout. I went back to the Lounge for breakfast after showering and did work before heading out on another walk, this time only an hour and a half to look around more of the historic area that I had missed the day before including the Palace and the San Francisco Cathedral a friend had suggested, specifically the catacombs. The Palace and main square are beautiful, but the catacombs and the tour are a must. I was lucky my friend had pointed it out to me. For 10 soles or around $2.50 US you get taken on a tour (there is no choice, a tour is mandatory), English every half hour or so and Spanish every ten minutes or so, of the Franciscan Order church which itself it stunning with many unique features including woodwork from Central America, tiles from Seville Spain, and the simple fact that the structure has survived countless earthquakes. However, the most important part are the catacombs below which were in fact a cemetery. The bones of hundreds if not thousands are located down there, and walking between them is both an eerie an awesome experience. Unfortunately pictures are forbidden.
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| Sheraton Lima Club Lounge View |
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| Sheraton Lima Club Lounge View |
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| Sheraton Lima Gym |
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| Sheraton Lima Gym |
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| Sheraton Lima Tennis |
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| Sheraton Lima Club Lounge Breakfast |
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| Lima Main Square |
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| Lima Main Square |
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| Lima Main Square |
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| Lima Cathedral |
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| Lima Palace |
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| San Francisco Cathedral |
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| View to Mountains from Downtown |
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| San Francisco Cathedral |
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| San Francisco Cathedral |
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| Palace Guards |
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| Lima Pedestrian Street |
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| Pisco Sour at Sheraton Lima Lobby Bar |
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| Main Square Lima |
I was back at the hotel by 11:30 am on purpose so that I could get out to the pool. One downside was that the tower of the Sheraton overshadowed the pool deck in the afternoon, so I decided to get out there early in the day. After a few hours of work down at the pool I went back for another workout, my goal to tire myself out before my flight. The hotel had been very generous in giving me a 7:00 pm check out so I finished up my work day in the room, packed up and showered before heading to the Club Lounge at 7:00 pm with my bags. I stayed there until 8:30 pm, then went down to the bar, had my free drink, the Peruvian classic a Pisco Sour, and then took one of the cars from the hotel to the airport. The traffic was the same as ever in Peru, a somewhat frantic experience of cars darting between unclear lanes and the relentless honking (I had managed to sleep the previous night without issue). At the airport I was once again through Immigration and Security in minutes (thank you APEC Business Card, the best $75.00 I have ever spent), and then headed back to the two lounges I had used around 10 days before on my red eye flight to Montevideo. I worked and wrote for three hours before it was time to board the Delta flight home. I had purposely stuffed myself so that I could go right to sleep as soon as I was on board, skipping the dinner meal and asking to just be brought coffee an hour prior to landing. I changed into shorts and a tank top and was out cold.
Upon landing in Atlanta, my other best investment ever, Nexus/Global Entry had me through Immigration in minutes. I then used the other great benefit of that, TSA PRE, to get back through security and went right to the international gates again to go to the Delta Lounge to shower.
I was pleasantly surprised that my flight from Atlanta to Seattle was on a 767-400, the same I had just flown so I could finish Star Wars: The Force Awakens. So I settled in for the few hours to relax and work on route to Seattle.
Well another adventure with work thrown in for good measure. Two secured orders and two possible ones with some good connections made from a work point of view. As to the rest, a big thanks to SPG, my Platinum Ambassador Kevin, the hotel brands of Four Points, Sheraton, Westin and the amazing Luxury Collection properties and all of the welcoming people I met in Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, and Peru. Also a big thanks to Delta, I have been an Alaska person for a long time now and though I am not jumping ship just yet, I did enjoy the service and staff very much on your airline and I do appreciate a wide body plane crossing the US. Avianca itself was quite good, though not the most helpful when a problem arose, but that was not their error, it was Aeroplan's fault, still the most difficult part for me that out of everything that could go wrong it was an error from back home in Canada. Still, in the grand scheme a minor day delay and some extra charges Aeroplan refused to reimburse me for sadly. On South America in general, the people and places I saw were wonderful. As I said at the outset, flights can be very cheap right now especially using a strong US dollar and flying out of Canada. Once down in South America there is so much to see and do and SPG and Starwood have the properties to help you do it. We still do not know what will come of the merger with Marriott, but hopefully we will find SPG and their excellent locations in South America unchanged.
Thanks for reading!
