So I started this blog to conical Marlo and my trip to South America. It is t-4 days. We are almost all set. The preparations have been interesting. Let’s start with the beginning…
Lauren, my middle daughter, is going to Tufts University studying something about Anthropology… Actually more like pre-med but who really knows for sure. She has some delusions about being a doctor and saving the world. She mentioned doctors without borders. I like to refer to it as Doctors without money, but hey, that’s just me. I am certain that she will become a doctor and continue to be the wonderful person that she is…
So that being said, she decided to take a semester and study a broad (I like to study a broad too, but more on that later :). She wanted to do a whole year, but it interfered with her studies. Also Tufts strongly encourages juniors (yea, she is a junior!) to go away. They don’t even guarantee housing for that year.
She chose Chile. She has taken years of Spanish and her grandfather is Bolivian (insert normal Bolivian comment here… Also this is a PG blog… My kids will probably read it….). So she is in Santiago Chile. I decided nearly immediately that I would go visit her. Why you ask… because she was there. At first I had planned to go by myself. It has been a big year for me. I decided to not drink for a year, I am in an exclusive REALLY long-term relationship (ok, it’s been 5 months, but this is me you are talking about), my job is good, my AV stuff is nearly perfect… anyway… things never go quite as planned. First my mother wanted to go. I thought that would be fun, but I don’t recall actually comminting to that …. Really… Sorry mom, it would have been fun…. Then I met this wonderful person and poof! There it is. Mostly of you should know that her name is Marlo… anyway….
So, Marlo and I planned a trip to South America. Marlo is much more traveled then I am (not that she has a lot of miles on her or anything…) AND me and planning really don’t get along that way so I attempted to schlep the planning off on Marlo… Denied! It was a big trip and she did not want the responsibility of planning the trip. So much for blaming her for anything that went wrong :> “We” decided that we would get help planning the trip. She was a AAA member, there was an office down the road, so Marlo went and visited Anne Marie. We decided we wanted to go to Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca (‘cus we like saying it), Iguazu Falls, the Amazon (not the web site) and a few other things… Well wouldn’t you know it reality struck. They struck in the form of time and money… We needed to pair down the trip. So we did… It is going to be two weeks and we are going to Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca, and, of course, Santiago Chile. Santiago and visiting Lauren is the point after all…
Now before I go further let me splain something. It may seem a bit odd (ok, most of you know me better then that but) that I am taking a 2 week South America trip with a women that I have only known for 6 months… Well for most people it might be, BUT we have already traveled to Maine, and Aspen, CO and Atlanta, GA and things are working out just fine. Actually way better then fine, but I digress from my digressing… So long story short (not really) we are going to South America. Actually we are leaving in 4 days of this typing (writing would be a little grand of a statement).
Anne Marie from AAA came up with an itinerary for us. We looked it over, went back and forth (rinse and repeat) several times and got things all set. Well the trip is through AAA through Avanti throuth Condor Travel. So it is really straight forward getting answers.
The trip involves LOTS of stops… ready… Fly from Hartford to Atlanta to Lima to Cusco, train to Puno (Mochu Piccu) train back to Cusco fly to Puno (Lake Titicaca) fly back to Puno back to Lima to Santiago back to Atlanta and then Hartford… yeah… I hope we get lots of miles for that…. Ok, maybe a little ambitious… time will tell…
I bought a new, really cool duffle/backpack/rolling bag that should be perfect. Marlo got a travel pack. We do not plan to check our bags except for the trip back from Santiago… That should be fun. Well I figured with 1 hour waiting for bags per stop never mind the risk of lost luggage it would be a LOT of time collecting luggage.
Then I had to bring a laptop computer. Let’s just leave it at had to… so I bought a really cool, tiny laptop that we both love. Built in web cam, sd card reader, only 2 lbs, etc. Perfect. Well I wanted to up load all the pictures that we are going to take… Speaking of picture we bought a new camera… We could not find Marlo’s nice Sony camera (I will give it back when we return… not really) so we got a new cannon elf. I love it… We will probably bring the Garmin GPS too, BUT I can’t find maps for Santiago… grumble… and a cell phone, and oh yeah the converter so I can charge all these devices up. My bag might be a little heavy and, well, that’s a lot of electronics… Airport security and customs are going to love me. I hope that I don’t make any really close friends in security if ya know what I mean. (ouch!)
So we have our itinerary set and we decide that Lauren could meet us in Cusco to go to Mochu Picchu with us. Sounds easy right… Well not so much so. I mentioned that we have three levels of party planners… We still don’t have train time to Mochu Picchu to get Lauren on the same train. The closest we go was a 7:00 am train. Well they are picking us up at 6:00 (YEA 6:AM!!!!) for a 1 ½ hour van ride to the train station. They claim that we are on a 7:00am train. Hmmmm maybe that is Spanish math, but for me it does not quite add up… It should be interesting. We also found out that we are on a hosted tour, not a guided tour… I think that means we have to chase people down. But it also means that we are going to have our names on signs at the AirportS. I always liked that.