Las Day at the Oasis

We woke up and went next door to eat breakfast at a hole-in-the-wall with expensive coffee (17 soles which is nearly 6 dollars a cup).  This place had permanent markers on the table and you could write or draw on the wall while you waited for your meal, so I left our mark. Go Grupo Loco! 

We tried to find a bus back to Lima, but they were booked until 3:00 pm so we walked around and shopped some more, at lunch, I got another braid put in my hair for $3.50, and Mom and Al went out on the paddleboat in the Oasis. 

We ran into some students who were interviewing tourists for school, but the questions that they had “translated” into English made no sense.  They told Alejandro in Spanish, but he even had trouble understanding them lol.  I think we eventually figured out and answered all their questions though and after we figured out what they were trying to ask they kept coming back to us and asking us to translate for others. 

Al was going downstairs when the woman at the front desk asked how many people were staying in our room and he told her 4.  When all of us went downstairs to check out, the manager stormed up to the front desk and she and Alejandro began having an extremely heated confrontation.  I just stood there shocked and wondering what the problem could be.  After she stormed off still trying to get the last word in, I asked Alejandro what was going on.  He informed me that she was LIVID because according to her we were trying to “mock” her by checking out of the second room and staying in one room instead of two.  I couldn’t believe it! We had checked out of the other room and kept the other because we thought we were going to be leaving last night.  We just wanted a place to shower before we got on the bus.  We only stayed in one room (which had 3 beds by the way) because we decided to stay another day at the last minute! Alejandro proceeded to tell her that we weren’t in any way trying to “mock” her and that if there was a per person charge we would be happy to pay it, but that wasn’t good enough for her apparently.  She made it a point to try to humiliate us.  So to that I say…DON’T stay at Hotel Suiza at the Huacachina Oasis…stay at the Hotel on the other end of the Oasis or the “Expensive” $75 hotel in between, I was told this lady has a reputation and the only reason we were taken there is because the other hotels were booked.

Anyways, enough of my ranting.  We grabbed a taxi to the bus station and hopped on Cruz del Sur, another double-decker bus, 4 hours back to Lima.  This time dinner was half of the same ham and cheese sandwich and an orange “woo hoo!” By the time we reached Lima at 7:30 pm we were starving.  We met Alejandro’s parents, his sister Rosa, and his niece Betty at the Chifa (Peruvian/Chinese) restaurant across the street from their house for dinner. Dinner was $40.00 or $5.00 each and we ate like kings!

We gave Alejandro’s family the gifts we had brought them, then went to bed J