Peru Here We Come

Greg journaled our whole trip so I will just use some of that - my add ins will be in blue.

We left Boise on time with an air freshener in the trunk in hopes that rotten milk smell wouldn’t overwhelm us when we got home (fortunately it didn’t).  While I was on a work trip to Georgia a month back Lisa and Natali miscommunicated and neither of them took the milk out of the van’s trunk.  When I got home at the end of the week they were complaining about the smell in the van.  On Saturday Lily and Emily were supposed to clean it but they said the smell was overwhelming.  Lily was wearing 4 masks and still couldn’t handle it.  Upon investigation I couldn’t avoid the putrid smell but there was no obvious source.  I opened the trunk and laughed and gagged.  There was an unopened two pack of Costco milk still in the cardboard box.  They had expanded and leaked on the trunk’s carpet. 

We had a layover in Houston so I took Emily and Lily out of the airport so they could check Texas off their state list and then met up with Mom at her gate.  While waiting we learned that Laurie’s flight from Salt Lake to Dallas had been delayed a couple of hours and it didn’t look like they would make their connection to Lima.  They ended up spending nearly 24 hours tin LA and then catching a red eye the next night to Lima.  That made our full day of travel on the 28^th seem pretty easy.  

 

Travel in Peru in the time of COVID is not a simple matter.  To exit the plane upon arrival we had to wear face masks and face shields in addition to having a negative COVID test within 72 hours of departure and completing a health affidavit.  Our temperatures were taken as well.  Lily had a bit of a cold and sniffled and coughed on the flight but fortunately didn’t have a fever.  Landing after 11PM, we stood motionless in the immigration line for 30 minutes while we waited for the computer system to come back up.  The next morning to enter the airport we again had to don 2 layers of protective wear, have our temperatures taken and have sanitizer sprayed on our hands and luggage—I’m not really sure how a spray or two on parts of our luggage makes a difference but our luggage was randomly sprayed regularly on the trip.  Another health affidavit was required for each domestic flight and masks and shields had to stay on for the duration of the flight until you exited the airport at which point we just wore masks.  COVID has decimated the country with far too many cases and deaths so you can understand why they take such precaution.  We were fortunate to have been vaccinated in advance so traveled with confidence.