Cheerio England, hello South America!

December 26th, Boxing Day, London

Bags are packed, we're ready to go! Three months in South America and a havasack and small bag each. At Heathrow we're thrilled that our American Airlines flight to Dallas Forth Worth is a code share and we actually get to fly British Airways. I'm quite nervous as we have a long journey ahead and too many changes: London to Dallas to Lima Peru onward to our final and first destination, Cuzco Peru. We've checked our bags to Lima and we get on the flight excited. We both immediately fall asleep and wake up 2 hours later in... Yup you guessed correctly, Heathrow. Flight's been delayed by two hours, exactly the layover time in Dallas.

But we figure the airline will have to put us on alternate flights if we miss our connections. 10 hours later, we're in Dallas and are given our "express pass" and told to run through immigration and security to our boarding gate to Lima. We make it in the nick of time but ask about our bags. The lady at the counter promises us that they are not leaving without our bags. Happily we get on board the flight with a huge tour group of Asians. We feel at home.

At Lima, we wait at the baggage carousel... And our bags don't show up. We're not too annoyed because we expected this in a way, travelling through the US is always a nightmare. We speak to a nice lady who shows us her computer screen which tells us our bags are in Dallas. There's only one flight a day she says, so hopefully you will get your bags tomorrow. We chill at the Priority Pass lounge and eat olives, confident that all will be well and isn't this all so exciting?!

We finally land in Cusco/Cuzco, 3400 m above sea level. We wait around for two hours filing reports and the confidence is going down as we listen to other people in the line who haven't received their bags for more than a week now.

Oh boy! We get to our quaint hostel Inkarri and are so pleased with wifi and skype as we get on the first of many calls to LAN, American Airlines, Cuzco airport, Lima airport, Dallas airport... And lots of angry tweets to AA.

The great South American Adventure has begun!