Last Bag

We're now in Lima -- made it here about 4:30pm local time this afternoon. We cut it suuuuuper close getting to the Guayaquil Airport earlier today. 

We exited our Guayaquil hotel about 11:30am; the hotel shuttle wasn't around, and so we opted to take a taxi to the airport. But, you know, it takes a little while to find a taxi willing to throw an extremely large board bag on its roof. We managed to find one, and Tim quickly tied his board bag on.

We got to the airport, and were reminded by LatAm staff that we needed to complete a health authorization form before getting on the plane to Peru. Ugh! Completing that dang form took us longer than it should have -- and we had to complete a form for all four of us. At one point, a LatAm employee came over to us and said, "You have to be done. We have to process you now." Once we had electronic copies of the completed health form, we could move through the ticketing process.

We got our boarding passes and a ticket agent printed our bag tags. The agent tied a 'Last Bag' sticker onto our blue duffel bag (gulp -- just made it). As we've discovered during our Ecuador airport visits, Tim has to go to a separate cashier line to pay for his board bag. Once he did that, we could finally enter the security line.

We passed through Migration and then security, and then we were spit out right at our gate. Although people were already boarding, I took our remaining Ecuadorian coins and ran to find some food for us. A can of Pringles chips and small bites from Cinnabon later (I'm not proud), and we were boarding the plane.

*****

Our alarms are set for 3am tomorrow. Our flight takes off from Lima to Iquitos at 5:30am -- and we're not taking any chances with that flight. Iquitos is the gateway to Peru's Amazon; it's the largest city in the world not accessible by road -- you can only get there via plane or boat. 

From Iquitos, we'll take a four-hour boat ride to the Tahuayo Lodge, an eco-lodge deep in the Amazon Rainforest. 

Here's what I know about the Tahuayo Lodge so far:

• There are no hot showers, only cold showers. Evidently, in the Amazon rainforest, water heated to 30-33 degrees Centigrade would become a soup of mycobacteria. If aerosolized by a shower head, the bacteria can be inhaled into the lungs and cause a serious, tubucular-like pulmonary infection. (I mean, who knew?)
• If we request laundry service, our clothes will be laundered in a traditional jungle fashion, beaten on logs, and then hung out to dry by the sun (maybe it'll do wonders for my running clothes?)
• There's no air conditioning
• The biodiversity will be stunning

We're pumped! Can't wait to get out there and see it all. We're fairly certain we won't have WiFi out in the jungle, so we'll post again once we re-emerge from rainforest living.