“It’s a big world out there, it would be a shame not to experience it.”

Anonymous

The three tours we took in Lima – bike, photo, and food, all covered the same districts near our hotel, but from diverse vantage points and with different narration. What we saw from the seat of a mountain bike was different from what we viewed through the lens of a camera or by peering over the top of a pisco sour glass. However, all three guides were informative and knew most every answer to our questions, including the local custom of how to cure various illnesses – have a shaman rub a guinea pig all over your body.

Thanks, but I’ll stick to Advil and a flu shot.

In a clear case of the jittery déjà vu’s, around 6:30 this morning and as we’re getting ready to leave our hotel and head to the Lima airport, Mary notices a voicemail that came in last night at 12:24 am. It’s from our neighbor across the street, but it’s so garbled about the only thing we think we can make out is “… call me …” Oh shit, now what? With the 2-hour time difference, we send a text just after 8:00 am local time, followed shortly by an unanswered phone call. A few minutes later a text comes back from our neighbor, “There was an emergency, but it’s resolved. Going back to sleep.”

WTF?!?!?

A frantic text to our dog-sitter is answered with a somewhat reassuring “All is good here. No emergency that I know of.”

Before we find out what this so-called emergency may or may not have been, we board the plane and lose all contact with the outside world for the next twelve days. As I mentioned before, ‘oh well, shit happens.’ We left enough emergency phone numbers to cover just about any issue, and as long as the house didn’t catch fire and the dogs are well, life is good!

Our 2-hour flight from Lima to Iquitos, Peru is 1:59 of uneventful flying. Uneventful that is until we land. As we begin final approach, the clouds that were with us the entire flight finally break and give us brief glimpses of the twists and turns of the Amazon River as if flows through the lush green jungle. Suddenly, carved out of this forested wilderness the runway appears before us. With a chirp of the tires as they hit heavy on the asphalt runway, we’re full throttle back in the air, the result of an aborted landing. Despite the captain blaming it on the wind, my guess is the plane came in too far down the runway, and there wasn’t enough room to come to a safe stop. The second attempt was textbook perfect.

These past few days of ‘shit happens’ have not been a good start to an already jittery vacation. Unfortunately, it won’t be our last event.