2018 Peru - Day 2

We arrived in Lima at 1:16am after the long, uneventful flight. We had a little bit of turbulence as we passed through three jet streams not long out of Toronto - not crazy bumpy, just a little bit of shaking from the 150mph winds.

There are twenty of us on the team. Five dentists, three dental students from Alberta, six RDH’s (Registered Dental Hygienists), two CDA’s (Certified Dental Assistants), and four non-dental folk in support. I fit into the latter category.

As soon as we pass through Peruvian customs and walk through the door into the baggage collection hall I can feel the tropical humidity in the air. We have to collect our baggage and re-check everything for the flight to Piura. Everyone is tired from the flight. The baggage is slow to come, and we soon realize that a lot of our equipment is missing and some of the teams luggage is as well. Not a good situation. Our first clinic is scheduled for tomorrow.

Our flight to Piura is scheduled for 5:15am, so we have a bit of time to kill in the Lima airport. All of us are pretty bagged. We walk the terminal, check out some of the shops, chat, grab bottle water, write emails, FaceTime with family, rest…

The flight leaves on time, and we arrive at our hotel in Chulucanas at 9:50am, in the same timezone as Toronto. We are met by Renzo, our guide and interpreter, and our friend Hannes (who was our guide in Ecuador) has travelled 22 hrs by bus from Tena to join our team. It is good to see him again.

Renzo has arranged for us to get some breakfast at a tiny little restaurant (pictured below – green walls) and we all enjoy chicken and rice, or fish and rice, with savoury beans. It was a good homestyle lunch in a restaurant that, unfortunately, most tourists would just walk past.

It is a busting town, with many three-wheeled motorcycles used as taxis. They are everywhere, weaving through intersections and between pedestrians. It is a good idea to look both ways before crossing the street. I recommend looking both ways twice!

 

After lunch we went to visit each of the facilities where we will be setting up our clinics. The first is an indoor sports facility in the centre of town (Chulucanas), and the second is a municipal property in a small village about thirty minutes out of town. That place is going to be rough – it is open air, with a very small shade structure. I am hoping that we have acres to some rooms, because I am not sure that anyone can work under the heat of the sun.

It is a very arid locale. We drove through miles of nothing but sand a scrub. This time of year we are just entering the rainy season, so most days it rains for an hour or so in the late afternoon. Today is very sunny.