Travel Purgatory

Imagine a bus packed with enough people to make it 3 to a seat and all there luggage and you have to sit on it for 2 hours! Sounds awful doesn't it? Well when you add in that it is 2 in the morning and you are on your way with your team to the airport to leave for Peru it automatically becomes amazing! Because when you have a person sleeping across your lap and are squished in between a person you met 4 days before and another person you have never met you don't have enough room to even think of complaining. 

The morning of July 4th was the CRAZIEST forth of July I have ever experienced. By 9 a.m. the Peru Cru and I were sitting in the Fort Lauderdale airport ready to start an 8 hour layover! The time flew by so fast I can't even remember how we spent the hours. At around 5 we boarded the plane to Lima and were now in "Travel Purgatory" as one of my team mates called it.

My first plane ride out of the country was an interesting one. I never realized what it was really like to not understand most conversations around you until that. Although the 6 hours spent on that plane opened up a lot of things. I look back in my journal and realize I was stoked about what was to come! Things had changed and I had realized that. But only in the aspect of that I possibly could be related to a bit, and only a bit. Let's just say that wasn't even close to half of it!

As we arrived in Lima I almost couldn't control myself I was a nervous wreck being told to go here and not there and say this and not that. But I made it through and soon was in the corner of the Lima airport camping out with the Peru Cru waiting for our 6 a.m. flight. I had been up for about 23 hours and had eaten a McPollo which was very stressful to order. Slowly I drifted off to sleep on the cold airport floor. 

3 hours later I wake up to talking and the first thing that registers in my brain is that they are talking about brushing their teeth. At that, I jump up or what felt like jumping up and went and experienced using dry shampoo and attempting to feel clean when you are completely gross! 

Skipping past some crabbiness, sickness, sleep deprivation and a flight delay...

On the flight to Iquitos I could hardly handle it! The sky and ground, everything was SO BEAUTIFUL!! It was the most amazing sight I had ever seen! Before I knew it we had touched down in Iquitos. After meeting some very important people we headed off to where we would be staying. It took about 2 hours but when we arrived I couldn't believe it. I was seriously in Peru and as I jumped over a puddle with my suitcase and saw "The Treehouse" we would be staying in. I got teary eyed and extremely scared... (Not anything an amazing pray circle couldn't fix though!)