Mom's phone went off at 3:30 a.m. local time...that's 1:30 a.m. at home. Ughhh. We all struggled to get out of bed but we had to. Amy's flight left earlier than ours so we all decided to go together this early. Amy had called to change the pick up time from almost 5 a.m. to around 4 a.m. but it wasn't confirmed. Mom took a quick shower and I washed my face and then put my bathroom stuff away in my suitcase and made sure I had everything packed up that needed to go into it. I grabbed my cords, earphones and other stuff that needed to go into my back pack away.
Mom cleaned up her stuff, got dressed and ready to go. She packed up her random things and we both made sure we had everything and knocked on Amy and Rhonda's door to see if they were ready. They were and they were getting the last of their things together in their bags.
We all went downstairs together and checked out. We put our bags aside and one of the front desk clerks handed each of us a paper bag with breakfast items inside.
We thanked her and went to go sit down in the lobby and wait to see when our driver showed up. It was too early to eat so I just sat there and used their internet for a while, mostly Instagramming to keep up with all of my pictures I took. Amy kept calling to find out if our driver was coming at the correct time, which was an our sooner than our original time. We sat there in the lobby waiting to hear back from someone or a driver to show up. Amy finally did get a call back and she told us that someone had canceled our pick up and that they had to call someone to come get us. We all sorta panicked. Was Amy going to make it to her flight on time? Were we? We sure hoped so because we were ready to go home.
It was after 4:30 when our driver's van approached the front of the hotel. Amy rejoiced, we got our luggage and got into the van as quick as we could. We had no time to spare. Since it was so early there wasn't a whole lot of traffic so getting to the airport took no time at all. There are perks for being up at this ungodly hour. We approached the airport around 5:00 a.m. and it wasn't that busy. He grabbed a ticket and took us right to the front of the departures. We gathered our luggage, handed him a tip, thanked him profusely and handed him our bagged breakfasts since we didn't open any of the items inside. We couldn't take them with us into the airport anyway.
The first thing we did was get to the ticket counter with our luggage and got ourselves checked in as well as dumped off our luggage. Since Amy was in more of a hurry than we were, we said our goodbyes and she rushed to go through security. Rhonda, Mom and I had a while to wait so we sauntered over to the gift shop since we had some Sols to spend still. We found a couple things including two T-shirts, a mask and some snacks for Mom. Then we saw the Dunkin Donuts across the way and decided we were going to have one. We each got a donut, mine was a chocolate one since they didn't have any maple ones, and we all savored every morsel of them.
We looked at the time and saw it was about 6:00 a.m. so we should go through security and start walking to our gate just to see where it was. We didn't board until about 7:30 a.m. so yes, we had a lot of time to kill. We got through security without any trouble, gathered our belongings and walked to the gate. We were at gate 24 and our flight left for Miami around 8:30 a.m. Once we found our gate, Mom and Rhonda found a place to camp for the next couple hours while I did some walking around. I wanted a drink after eating that donut so I found a place to purchase a few things. I asked Mom if she needed anything and she wanted some Pringles, lol. I piled my stuff onto the counter and the cashier asked me if I had my passport. I need my passport to purchase stuff at an airport convenience store? Since when? None of the other places needed to see it. I walked all the way back to our seats and all the way back...it wasn't a short walk by the way, showed him my passport and purchased my things. I walked back to the seats at our gate.
We all hung out for a while and each of us got up to use the bathroom a couple times. I was on my phone most of the time using the free airport internet. No one at home was up yet so I couldn't call anyone to pass the time. I wasn't in the mood to write in my journal or read my book I brought...my attention span wasn't quite awake just yet. We hung out and chatted with each other until it was time to board.
It took a while to board because each group had to put their carry on luggage and bags onto tables while the airline workers rummaged through them. At first, we weren't sure what they were looking for. Then when it was our group's turn they told us in broken English that they were looking for sodas, waters and other liquids. I had just bought a brand new bottle of water to drink on the plane and I had to toss it out. I always thought if you bought it inside the airport after security you could take it with you. Apparently, not from Lima to Miami...which was weird. I've never had this problem before (even on international flights in the past) and I've always made sure I had water with me on the plane. Oh well. I tossed it, grabbed my back pack and boarded the plane.
Rhonda still had her tickets in her hand when we were getting on the plane. You know where the tunnel you walk down meets the entrance to the plane? Yeah, she dropped her ticket and it literally fell through the crack and on to the ground below the plane. I could not believe I saw that happen. Rhonda frantically asked the plane crew if she needed the ticket and they said that she shouldn't since she was already through the ticket scanner and on the plane.
We walked down the aisle, found out seats, stuffed our back packs under the seat in front of us, got comfortable and awaited our 6ish hour flight to Miami. Mom and I sat next to each other and Rhonda sat in the row behind us. We took off a little late but we were still going to have enough time during our layover in Miami. About an hour into our flight, the flight attendants started handing our food and drinks. That is one one thing about international flights vs. domestic flights, we got food no matter how long or short the plane ride was. We got ham and cheese wraps, a bag of Lay's potato chips, I had water and our dessert was a brownie. I ate part of my food because a lot of it was carbs and I was trying to cut back on them.
The rest of our flight I watched Pitch Perfect, Easy A and Booksmart. I've seen them all before but they are pretty entertaining. I did a little bit of journaling while I watched these movies. When it was time to descend into Miami, I put my stuff away in my back pack and closed my eyes for a little while. When we landed, we turned our phones on, waited our turn to get off once we made it to the gate, grabbed our stuff and immediately went through customs. We tried doing the mobile passport, got it all filled out and then waited and insane amount of time in line. We had no idea why the line was so slow. It turns out we really didn't need to do our mobile passport because they checked our physical passport anyway. Lame. We answered the necessary questions and then went down stairs to get our luggage and take it to the connecting flight area. I'm glad that was a quick grab, dump and go.
We walked to our gate and found a place to camp out for about three hours. I said to Mom and Rhonda that we should find something to eat while we were here for a couple hours and they agreed. I asked them what we wanted to eat and Mom said she wanted French fries. I saw a Nathan's hotdog place on the way to our gate and asked if that was okay with everyone. They all agreed. Mom stayed with our stuff and Rhonda and I walked to Nathan's. She also just wanted French fries and a sweet tea. According to the menu we could get two hot dogs, two fries and a sweet tea for a great deal so that is what I went with. Rhonda told me if I paid for her tea that she would get me a soda from one of the stores. That is what we went with. We ordered, paid and then waited for a few minutes for our food. We found a store and bought at Cherry Coke Zero and started heading back to our gate.
We ran into the Oklahoma couple that was on the Puno tour with us. We chatted with them a few times through the trip and got to know them a little bit. They like to travel a lot and were pretty bummed when Covid hit. It made it really difficult since that's what they did together for fun. We chatted for a little bit with them. They asked how long of a layover we had and we told them it was a couple hours so we were trying to find some food before our 6 hour flight. They said they were trying to find stuff to do as well but their flight left for Oklahoma sometime after 8 p.m. so they had a while to hang out. We chatted about football because it was Saturday and he was a Sooner's fan and I told him I was a WSU Cougar. He thought that was pretty cool. We told each other safe flights and they went to go sit in a bar for a while and Rhonda and I went back to our gate to eat our food.
The food definitely hit the spot even though it was a hotdog and fries. I spent the rest of the time before we boarded Instagramming and chatting with Ben on the phone. I was so ready to get home, shower and take a coma. We finally boarded the plane, found our seats, got comfortable and we were finally on our way to Seattle.
Since Mom didn't bring her wireless headphones, I let her borrow mine so she could watch a movie or two on the way home. I spent that time writing in my journal, making notes and looking out the window when there wasn't any cloud cover. I did get up once to use the restroom...which is always a pain in the butt on an airplane.
Somewhere over Colorado/Utah she wanted to shut her eyes for a while so she gave me the headphones. I ended up watching Coach Carter for the remainder of the flight. I was getting tired and could not wait to be home and in my bed. I went through four time zones that day and we were done traveling for a while. We got close to Seattle and was clear enough that you could see the city down below. The lights looked pretty cool.
We finally touched down at SeaTac, we had to wait a few minutes to get off the plane and immediately went to baggage claim.
We had to wait a few minutes to get our luggage so I walked over to buy some water because I really needed some water. The luggage started to circle through and we grabbed the ones we needed. I really need to get a new suitcase. Rhonda gave her husband a call since he was in the cell phone lot and asked him to meet us outside at the arrivals near the American Airlines sign. We didn't have to wait long but sadly, it was raining. He threw our luggage into the back of the truck and I hoped that my stuff didn't get too wet. We hopped into the truck and got to know her husband as we drove south on I-5. That man definitely loved to hunt.
We finally got to my house, just before midnight, where he and Rhonda dropped Mom and I off. We thanked him for picking us up from the airport and dropping us off at the house. Mom told Rhonda she would see her at work. We put Mom's luggage into her Expedition and we went inside the house with my suitcase. Mom grabbed the stuff she left here, used the restroom and drove home. I told her to call or text me when she gets home so I know she got there safe and sound. Ben was on a 24 hour shift in Tenino so I wouldn't see him until the next day when he got home. I immediately took a shower and went to bed. I was so tired.
A quick recap:
This was our first time to Florida and Peru.
I found 14 caches, one in Florida and 13 in various place we went to in Peru.
We had to wait 18 months to go on this trip because of Covid.
We traveled over 12,000 miles in 12 days.
We should have gotten five new stamps in our passports but for some reason they didn't stamp them for anything. We think it was because of Covid.
We met the film crew for the new Transformers movie at Machu Picchu.
Go through a travel agency if you or anyone you know will be traveling to Peru. It will save you money, time and headaches.
You can not prepare for the high altitude but you can make it less intense for you by buying cans of air, drinking or chewing coca leaves, light meals, no alcohol, drink lots of water and sleep. By the second or third day the headache should go away but you will always feel like your out of breath or your heart is racing.
Next Adventure: Dad's Birthday
No comments:
Post a Comment