“We are ready! This is the cleanest we will be all trip.”

Today is the day we leave for Peru, and it is also the day we discovered that travel is often a non-linear event. Instead of flying to Miami at 11:50am, we are *hoping* to fly at 6pm due to technical difficulties. But we take it as a good omen, because at least we are not on a malfunctioning plane!

The cleanest and least sweaty we will be all trip is right now, in the airport!

Although we don’t know each other yet and don’t know what the next hours will bring, we are all talking and laughing and sharing creative ideas with each other. We haven’t missed our phones! We have had conversations with a group from Colombia, and practiced sighting the native bird species of RDU.

Practicing our binocular skills at gate C11, to identify the house sparrows that are stuck inside the airport terminal

At some point the airline even brought out the snack cart. Not just dry snacks, but the cart with the special “Refuel and Refresh” box of snacks with 8 lucious choices.

To keep our spirits up, we all joined in to sing “Los Pollitos Dicen”, a Spanish children’s song. The silly chicks say, “pío, pío, pío” to get their worms. Maybe if we sing their song we will get what we want too and make our flight! Wish us “buena suerte” (good luck) for the next leg of our journey and what will probably be a long next 48 hours.

Michelle is very excited for snacks!

1:15am update- we have all successfully boarded a flight from Miami to Lima. Hopefully we will still make our morning flight to Iquitos as scheduled and be back on track for the rest of our journey!