It was strange to pack up and leave the house and our visitors Sky and Adriana behind.  They were flying the following day to Spain. I guess you know you’re a well-travelled family when Mom has to drive to Schiphol Airport three times in a week.

With our trusty new hybrid backpack/suitcases and my good luck flying outfit, we bid Holland a temporary farewell and flew 12.5 hours over the Atlantic Ocean, across South America and landed in Lima, the capital city of Peru.

 My longest previous flights were the 9.5 hours. I fly round trip every year from Amsterdam to Vancouver. I was surprised how fast the 12.5 hours flew by (pun intended).

For the first two hours I played the language learning games. Dutch and German are surprisingly close and I passed with flying colors, French I did pretty well too and Spanish… well, I think we’re going to have to stick with charades while in Peru ‘cause the language game only confirmed that I don’t know any Spanish at all. But who says you need a common language to understand each other?

It wasn’t until the 11th hour that my eyes started getting extremely heavy,  the thought of arriving in my 101st country revived me and I was instantly wide awake.

Unfortunately after all of our traveling, I fear Kees and I will never experience that shock of arriving in a new place.

We consciously point things out and try to see it with new eyes, as if it were our first time out of Canada or Holland. The dented cars, smell of pollution and traffic I’ve smelled a thousand times and could never be pin pointed to just one memory. Sitting amidst the traffic, we felt like we could be  in a capital city anywhere in Asia or Africa. Street lines are used more as a guideline then a rule in traffic. ABBA sang through the crackling static of the taxi’s (yes, taxi! Don’t tell Ammon) radio. It’s so fun to be surrounded by such different scenery, and to know I’m in South America for the second time.

One of my biggest worries I had before leaving was what to pack because of the large temperature range we will experience. So far, it is the perfect temperature for thin leggings, boots, tank top and a light jacket. Glad to have that concern out of the way for now.

I was a little bit overwhelmed by the end of all the planning for this trip, at least now that I am here and there’s no turning back, I feel a lot better. Everything always seems to just fall into place if you keep moving forward, you’re feet seem to take you with them. I can certainly say that having to be conscious of money and make my own travel decisions has made me so much more appreciative and in awe of Ammon and all he did for us on our 4 year family adventure. The pressure we put him under when he just didn’t know everything as well as we thought he should, must have been tough on him, he was just doing his best. He truly was the hero of the Sihpromatum series.

As a reminder of where we were, we were greeted by a Spanish speaking Bart Simpson at our hotel.

As soon as we checked in our hotel we had reception order us a pizza (my goodness, imagine if we could’ve done THAT on our big family adventure!!!!), set up my latest office, inhaled the food and passed out.

As always when flying this direction, I woke up at 4am starving, I was thrilled when Kees informed me that there was one piece of pepperoni pizza left over that we could share. Overwhelmed with happiness to have that piece of food I grabbed it out of the cupboard where it was hidden and took a big bite!! Having the sensation that something wasn’t quite right,  I pulled my head back, looked down and discovered it was crawling with tiny little ants. I instinctively started chewing as fast as possible to make sure the ones I had undoubtedly just put in my mouth were dead. Next came inspecting and picking off the dozens of ants fighting to share my pizza. Didn’t they know I already had to share with Kees? One of the downsides of travelling with another experienced traveller is…. ant infested food doesn’t mean you don’t have to share anymore!

We are in Lima for 3 days before we fly to Cusco and head to Urubamba on June 14th for my 25th birthday.

Savannah

Next post will include ancient pyramids, local street life and ocean views in Lima.