Michael and I are sitting in the Lima Aeropuerto, waiting for our flight to Iguazu (via Buenos Aires). But before I talk about the next location, it has been a few months since our first post so I’ll catch everyone up.
The past two months has been a chaotic race to tie up loose ends at work, see all the families before traveling, and pack our apartment/lives up into two big back packs and two small back packs. I’ve spent a lot of time over the past 5 or so years reading other people’s blogs about their world travels and without fail they have a picture a week or two before leaving of all of their clothes and supplies laying out on their bed, thoughtfully planned. That did not happen for us. Michael was at REI the day before we left buying clothes for me that I am assuming will just fit since they still have not been tried on. And the morning we left our apartment, all of my travel “stuff” was piled on the floor and entrusted to Michael to pack. Completely not my style, but life was chaotic so we had to go with it.
After dinner with our good buddy Jeff at Piece, our last night in Chicago was spent at the Brown’s home drinking beers, eating Halloween candy and hanging with their kiddos, Colin and the Freel family.
Too much stuff:
Our first set of flights landed us in Lima, Peru for a 20 hour layover. We stayed at an AirBNB pretty close to the airport and made the most of our 20 hours by sleeping a ton (Jane), running 10 miles along the Pacific (Michael), seeing a rock beach with a ton of birds, and spending a little time downtown to check out some of the touristy items. Michael was pretty set on having some ceviche, but it wasn’t in the cards, so we’ll have to enjoy Peru’s amazing cuisine when we’re back in a few months. What was in the cards was skewers of beef heart, some chicken and pork belly with super delicious chimichurri and a mystery orange salsa. I also drank a juice made from dark purple corn – I wouldn’t call it delicious, but it was worth trying once.
We had a few new transportation experiences today: we rode in a shared taxi – we get in and the driver yells at pedestrians while driving and hits a plastic paddle against his car, until he gets four passengers. We also took one of those old buses where riders jump on and off each block – similar yelling at pedestrians occurs to encourage them to ride “this” bus verses the million others. Both rides were awesome and cheap, but I’m not sure we would have been able to execute without help from our AirBNB host.
Now we’re off to Iguazu Falls courtesy of a red eye flight – Michael is investigating what it takes to make a 5am transfer happen in Buenos Aires between the international and domestic airports. We are about 60% recharged and about 70% relaxed at this point, so hoping a few days of beautiful falls and a lot more sleep will up those percentages.
Here are a few pictures from La Punta (crabs, birds, rocks and the Peru Naval Academy): 
