I arrived last night in Lima, Peru, having flown from Montreal, Canada, to Lima, via Panama City, on Copa Airlines (nice planes, bad food even for airline food, on time flights).
It was cool in Montreal when I left, hot and humid in Panama City and mild in Lima when I arrived. The airpot in Panama City was busy and the most common store was a chocolate and candy store (plus chips)…they seemed to be every third or fourth store and were busy! I landed and walked towards my gate, looking for the Copa Lounge. I finally found it and it was quiet but pretty boring (horrible food, but I was able to get ice and drinks). I didn’t stay long since I wanted to walk around after my first nearly six hour flight. The boarding area for my flight was hot, crowded, and had few seats, which was ok because the flight boarded nearly an hour before taking off and the boarding process was pretty quick and efficient.
In Lima customs was quick, the wait for my bags was average, and as soon as I walked out door 3 my Taxidatum driver called me and told me he was waving his hand…I waved mine and saw him. In all from touchdown around 7:10 pm to arrival at my lodging at 8:45 took just over 90 minutes, not bad (it’s about a 35 minute drive). The drive to the apartment took us by the Terazzas Club de Tenis where I will be playing this week.
Susan and Tim Wright and I are sharing an apartment this week. Susan and I are playing 65 doubles. Tim played 65 singles (went 1/1) & is playing 65 doubles; Susan 65 singles and I’m playing 70 singles. Susan and I both play not before 11am tomorrow. Susan plays on Center Court (court 3).
Every match for this tournament has an umpire and a ball boy, unique among the masters tournaments I have played. The umpires call all the lines here. When matches are done a crew comes out, one to sweep the court, one to line the court and a third to spray the court with water. Very efficient, which is good since there are well over 700 entrants in this tournament. There are 11 doubles teams in W65s which is great, though only 7 in singles. There are 8 in W70s.
I practiced for about 40 minutes this morning. It was misting pretty hard the whole time so the balls at the end of practice were wet and orange and hard to see. I met up with Steve Dance from Australia to try and find a court. He found a spot on one court with three guys and I found a court with only two people and asked a guy who looked like he wanted to hit if he’d hit with me. He turned out to be quite a good player…he was trying to blow me off the court and did succeed sometimes since he kept the ball in the court when hitting hard. I think he was the 10th seed in M60s since his name was Marcelo and he said he was from Chile.
After hitting with Marcelo I hit with Susan for about 10 minutes, then we had to get off the courts so they could be prepared for matches. We shared the court with two other players, one of whom I played here a couple of years ago.
After tennis Tim got ready for his 9:30 match, we all had breakfast, then I did some exercises while they were out. After Tim’s match (he lost to the 6th seed, but had a very good second set), we all went to Wong’s the local grocery store. I too my carryon size rolling suitcase to hold what we bought and that worked well. I got some “cancha”, small salted fried corn kernels, which are delicious and addictive (served as a starter in many restaurants), a couple of potatoes (Peru is famous for it’s potatoes..we got a yellow one and a purple one), and we bought some coca leaves for altitude sickness in Cuzco, and of course Peruvian dark chocolate among other things. Wong’s is a 2-story grocery store and has most of what we needed.
After putting out things away we went out for lunch at a Ceviche restaurant nearby, Restaurante Alfresco. Tim and I had ceviche, which was really delicious. Ceviche is a national dish of Peru, consisting of fish or shellfish, cured/cooked in lime juice, with slices of onion, sweet potato and large kernels of corn. After lunch we walked along the Pacific Ocean for a long ways…all I know is that I had over 22000 steps at the end of the day. We stopped by the Club on the way back to see if the order of play was out (it was not), and then I decided to get a massage. It was a so/so massage, but with tip cost around $22, so I can’t complain!
Once back at the apartment I cooked the yellow sweet potato (microwave) and it was fantastic, tasted like butter even though I had nothing on it.
And that’s a wrap on Day 1 in Peru.