KEY POINTS:
Prime Minister John Key has had a briefing on what to expect at Apec from an expert - his Labour predecessor, Helen Clark.
Key accepted the former PM's offer to give him any help he wanted in foreign affairs, and spent 45 minutes on the phone with her just before he left New Zealand.
She briefed him on the leaders he would meet and on how to best handle the two leaders' meetings tomorrow and on Monday (NZ time).
Yesterday, the countdown for Key's arrival at Lima's seaside Miraflores Park Hotel took about 40 minutes.
"His plane has landed."
The message is passed along.
"His motorcade is 20 minutes away."
By this time the waiting party has swelled to about 50 - officials, ambassadors, hotel staff, security, journalists.
"He is five minutes away."
Tim Groser and Murray McCully, who have been in Lima for three days, emerge to greet their Prime Minister of 27 hours. They don't yet feel like the real Trade Minister or Foreign Minister.
When Key finally arrives, it is in a beige sedan with tinted windows and no New Zealand flag.
He steps out to a perfect evening, straightens his orange tie, strides up the steps ... and begins his first international task.
At least he looks prime ministerial, even if his car doesn't.
Security is tight. It is for every Apec conference, but Lima has faced the consequences of terrorism since the 1980s. So there are three cops on every corner, and a couple of soldiers as well.
The terrorist group Shining Path is still active, though nothing like it was at its height - a commission of inquiry says 70,000 people were killed or disappeared in the conflict between the group and state forces.
A man was arrested in Lima last week carrying 36 grenades.
This will be a memorable Apec for Key, being his first, but is also one of the more important conferences of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum.
The global financial crisis makes this summit probably the most relevant since the 1999 gathering in Auckland, which precipitated co-ordinated military intervention in East Timor to stop even greater bloodshed as Indonesia withdrew.
Apec was formed in 1989 - when Key was an Auckland currency trader in the newly deregulated New Zealand economy - with 12 members to promote free trade.
Now it has 21 members, including the United States, China, Japan and Russia. At least half a dozen other nations want to join the closed shop.
Today, deregulation of financial market is being blamed for the worst financial turmoil since the 1930s, and Apec is expected to endorse the G20's set of actions to combat the crisis, approved in Washington last week.
Helen Clark finessed Apec to the extent that, by her last term, she was getting her own agenda - climate change in particular - on to the Apec schedule.
Whether the sustainability agenda proves sustainable in the current environment will be tested over the next few days.
As a new leader, replacing a nine-year veteran, Key will be something of a novelty at the summit.
But he isn't the only Apec leader to have recently formed a Government very quickly.
The host President, Alan Garcia of Peru, accepted the resignation last month of the country's entire Cabinet, including the Prime Minister.
A third of its ministers had been accused of taking kickbacks involving a Norwegian oil company.
Four days later a new Cabinet, including a new Prime Minister, was sworn in.
Garcia will be one of seven leaders with whom Key will have formal talks this weekend.
