'Twas the Night Before.....Our Big Trip

So we are immunized, passported, packed, and ready to hit the road. We made it out the door about 5 a.m. this morning on our way to Stuart to visit Erin and the boys. We enjoyed a last all-American meal of wings and hamburgers (salad for pescatarian me) before settling down for the night. Tomorrow we head to Miami where we will fly non-stop on LAN airlines to Lima, Peru. The last two days have seen me frantically attempting to fit a large dining room table full of stuff into two manageable backpacks. I think I have finally given up and will add a duffel bag to the mix. Between a nebulizer for Wyatt, several pounds of trail mix, and a jar of peanut butter, among other things, two backpacks just isn't going to cut it.

It is a unique challenge to pack for an international, non-luxury trip with two children. Clothing is the least of what we have packed. In fact, as has happened each time we have traveled abroad before, I am quite sure that several days into the trip we will decide that we don't have nearly enough clothes to make it through. Then several days later, after we have ineptly attempted to hand wash several items, we will decide that we can live with a vague waft of funk swirling about us for the remainder of the trip. Though this sounds sort of horrible when one is sitting in a home equipped with a Maytag front loader, it is actually a very liberating experience and one that is sort of synonymous with eating things that you would never even consider if you were home.

More than clothing, the "just in case" stuff is what gets me. Headlamps, duct tape, baby wipes, diarrhea medicine, rain ponchos, clothespins, zipties, work gloves......the list goes on and on. We aren't positive exactly what the situation is going to be in Ayacucho and theses types of things prove to be invaluable more often than not. In addition we have two water bottles apiece as it is essential to keep hydrated at all times due to the high altitude. Ayacucho sits at 9000 ft. and some of the areas we will travel to reach up to 13,000 ft. Altitude sickness is a common occurrence, leaving those struck by it with headaches and nausea. There doesn't seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason to who gets hit the worst by this...hopefully it is not women and children under the age of 14.

I can honestly say that I am very excited about our trip. This is my fourth (or fifth, depending on how you count it) time out of the country and I feel like I really have an idea of what to expect with regards to culture shock and challenges such as language barriers. Though a lot of the details are still a mystery to us, I am confident that the kids and I can successfully face the challenges of traveling internationally. I look forward to the exhilaration that comes with doing so. But first, just one last French fry....

Jenny