Being somewhere I never had any particular desire to see, Miami was a pleasent surprise! Despite my horrendous experience at Miami International, which included a 2.5-hour wait at immigration (although that could be karma for all those times I sailed through LHR looking on at the endless queue of non-EU passengers); finding my backpack dumped in the corner of the baggage collection hall; and not having enough change for the bus, I still found Miami to be a welcoming city with a surprisingly chilled out vibe. OK, so I did arrive on a Thursday night, but I got into town at the party peak of 10.30pm and was expecting this party hub to be rockin' but it was pleasently laid back, with a diverse and extensive restaurant culture. South beach is also nice and the city lives up to its stereotype of being full of beautiful people. The only thing that was a surprise was that many people in Miami only speak Spanish - I had to speak more Spanish in Miami than central america!!
I stayed in a cute hostel nestled between two restaurants on Ocean Drive (queue the song) and ate fantastic fish tapas on my first night. The next day - after much obcessing and weighing up of pros and cons - I decided to give into technological peer pressure and buy a tablet PC from the stateside electronics giant Best Buy. Since beginning my travels I have been amazed at the number of backpackers who travel with about a grand's worth of equipment ranging from laptops, tablets, iPads, and iPhones etc. Latin America is extremely well connected - much more so than Europe - and every hostel I stayed in had excellent Wi-Fi connections. Airports and coffee shops also tend to offer free Wi-Fi for customers and since tablets are also pretty cheap in the states, I thought I would take the plunge and stop feeling like the poor backpacker. It's been the thing I bought for my trip, hands down!
After my whistlestop 24-hours in Miami, i flew into Lima, Peru. Lima also turned out to be a city that is very different from expectations. Hearing from previous visitors and according to the Lonely Planet, Lima is not the safest of places and has a reputation for high rates of petty crime. However, I found the city to be extemeley welcoming and the people some of the friendliest I've come across.
One of the most memorable things to happen, and something I've strangely always wanted to experience, was an earthquake. It was about 1 am and I was lying in bed playing with my new toy :-) and felt the dorm beds shake for about 7 seconds. Oddly, my first thought was that it was a washing machine (the washing machine in my Surbiton flat used to make the whole apartment shake) but when dogs started barking afterwards, my plate tectonics 101 lessons came back to me, and there was no doubt that the shaking was caused by shifting of the lithosphere. Turns out the quake measured 4.9 on the Richter scale...not bad!
Lima is also the destination where I begin my tour of south America. Being a slightly more hostile environment and more difficult to navigate than central America, many backpackers opt to join a tour around the continent for ease. My tour will take me from Peru, Cusco and macchu picchu, into the Amazon and the (very) highlands of Bolivia, finally entering Chile, stopping at all the popular gringo stops in between. Looking forward to it!
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