Table Of Contents
It turned out that the two exams I was supposed to give ended up being at the beginning and end of the exam period, so that I could make it to the referee seminar in Lima which was right in the middle of the exam period.
The Air Canada flight options were not especially well timed, but at least I didn’t have to change planes in the US. I flew via Bogota, both times flying through the night, connecting to an Avianca flight. I guess this is like the flight from Auckland to French Polynesia, attempting to maximize aircraft utilization.
I arrived in Lima a couple of days early. Even though there is minimal time difference, flying all night is tiring (sleep deprivation, not jetlag).
Before the seminar, April 11 to 14
I biked from my place to YKF with my luggage. Fortunately, the weather was good. I had arranged a long layover at YYZ between the bus and the train, got a “long layover” UP Express ticket from the website ($12 return rather than the usual $9 one-way), and met up with some friends for ramen, before heading back to YYZ for my 11pm flight.
Right off the plane, I walked around Lima the first day and spotted some parrots and other birds, as well as the nearby Huaca Huallamarca; I walked right by the larger Huaca Pucllana but had all my stuff and never did get a chance to visit it. The Bosque El Oliver is very much not a forest, but it is a park and well-used urban space.
I had a weird eggs benedict on brioche for lunch; the next table over had a bickering mom and adult son. Dinner at Primos was quite good BBQ chicken, maybe better than St Hubert.
The next day I took the bus 3 hours to Paracas, leaving at 5am (needed to take an Uber to and from the bus station to avoid walking in the dark in unknown neighbourhoods). Normally there are lots of boats that go to the Islas Ballestas, but the conditions were unsuitable and they all went to Isla Blanca instead, which also had penguins, pelicans, Inca terns, and boobies. I also went to the Paracas reserve in a bus tour, visiting a bunch of the scenery, and talking to other people on the tour (a mechanical engineer from the Basque; a couple from Norway; and a couple of surgeons including a Peruvian-American, who lived in Lima). Finally, I rented a bicycle and rode around, though there was a strong headwind in the afternoon. Better time for paragliding than biking.
Most of the other Canadian referees arrived on the 14th. I did some final exam marking, checked out from my cheap-but-good nearby hotel, Aku, and walked over to the official event hotel, which was not the initial one advertised. Somehow we (and random others) got a junior suite. Not complaining. Some of us went on a walk to the beach at Larcomar, had lunch at the mall, and visited the flea markets on our way back.
The seminar, April 15 and 16
Not much to say here. Someone who had been to the Istanbul seminar in December as well as this one said that this one was more chill. They used the same videos but had refined some of the answers. There were some practical exercises where we tried to do things that weren’t allowed by the rules, so that we could see what they were like.
I made it to the Bloque bouldering gym in the afternoon of the second day of the seminar, since we were done at noon. It was a 10 minute walk from the hotel. It’s modestly sized and many of the problems weren’t that hard, though of course there are always going to be problems that I can’t do. There weren’t too many people there in the afternoon of a workday.
After the seminar, April 17
I had another day in Lima afterwards, which happened to be a holiday, and it felt like there were fewer cars on the road in the morning. I went to some effort to find a local judo club and managed to find one which was just moving to a new location. The listed contact address wasn’t the best at communicating, but I made it, and people were friendly.
Since my flight left at 2am, I also was able to make it to the Circuito Mágico del Agua, which is in a park and has lots of fountains. After dark, they have a light show set to music. The guy at the gate didn’t like my fancy camera (“no professional photography”) but let me in as long as I didn’t take pictures from it. Of course, they have a lot of rules and don’t necessarily enforce them: there are a lot of signs about not buying food from non-official itinerant vendors and lots of such vendors around.
It was the Thursday before Good Friday (some Semaña Santa celebration) and there were heaps of people at the churches.
Afterwards, I made my way to a cheap hotel (US$17) near the airport and didn’t manage to sleep before my flight. It turns out that an Uber to the hotel was cheaper than the shuttle and did not require me to wait 1.5 hours. At least I could have a lie down at the hotel before taking my flights, with yet another early morning stop at the Bogota lounge for breakfast.
I did have to do a bunch of things from real life on this trip: exam marking, OAC Board meeting, travel planning for the summer trip to Europe…