Living on a Prayer

WOW! The fact that we’re sitting in the Miami airport about to leave for Peru is a miracle, no joke.

Yesterday, I was on a 6am flight from Phoenix to Dallas. The next day (today), we were supposed to fly to Peru from Houston. I got a notification right before boarding that our flight to Peru was canceled! I called Ryan, and asked him to figure it out while I was on the plane. Upon landing, I was told we had a flight from Dallas to St. Louis and then to Miami, departing in 4 hours. Ryan hadn’t even started packing, and had an hour and a half drive from Waco, giving him 30 minutes to pack for a 3 month trip!!

I met him at DFW airport, where we re-packed our bags on the curb (see above picture). Now we had about an hour until our flight started boarding, so we headed for security. The line for security wasn’t long, but Ryan was stopped. He had forgotten to take his laptop out of his backpack, but they quickly removed the laptop and continued searching. And searching. Soon 4 more TSA agents were surrounding the backpack, and I was convinced Ryan was about to get arrested. It turns out, he had forgotten to remove some knives from his backpack before frantically packing, so he decided to mail them home. At this point, we have about 25 minutes before our flight boards. He leaves, and after about 10 minutes I anxiously text him to see where he is. It turns out, the place to mail it was a 20 minute walk. He ends up having to throw away his knives, and by the time he gets back we have 4 minutes to get to our gate.

Our gate wasn’t close. At all. So we start running. We ended up hopping on the passenger shuttle, arriving at our gate to find out our flight was delayed! It all worked out, and soon we were on our way to St. Louis. We had about an hour layover there, and then another 3 hour flight to Miami.

We got to the Miami aiport this morning 4.5 hours early, because we didn’t want there to be any stress! It was a relaxed day, much better than yesterday. We should be in Lima by tonight, and Cusco by early tomorrow morning.

I’ve never needed patience and flexibility like I have in the last day. We have literally been living on prayers for the last 24 hours, and I get the feeling that won’t be changing any time soon. We’ve been able to meet some really interesting people along the way, and all in all it’s been a very exciting start to our trip!