Family Gathering

Upon arriving at the Fort Lauderdale port, we

started talking to a girl from the North-Eastern states who had been visiting with a British guy we'd talked with several times on the ship. Turns out they were a cruise romance, only met 5 days ago, and were starting to see each other! We thought that was pretty hilarious. So as our ship was late, we had to rush over to the Fort Lauderdale airport where we were meeting up with my sister! We then found a hotel for the night and made our way there, realizing how much we appreciated the silence of the cruise as the highways in Fort Lauderdale just seemed overwhelmingly loud. The next day we went to a athletic outlet store to buy new hiking boots and rain jackets since we hadn't replaced our stolen ones yet. Luckily the outlet store was better priced than back home! We than went to the airport, fortunately early, and were reminded that we were not allowed to board the plane unless we had proof of onward travel! So we found a website that allowed us to buy cheap bus tickets from northern Peru to Ecuador. It then only cost $3 to buy insurance so we could cancel without penalty

:) totally tricked them! We then boarded our 5+ hour flight to Lima! Finding a taxi was only somewhat hectic, and luckily there was mainly English speakers at the airport, as we had only been learning Spanish for about a week at this point. When we made it to the hotel in Miraflores, Lima, my parents and brother had already fallen asleep! So we woke them up and visited for a couple hours until well after midnight! Tyler never really fully woke up. Apparently they'd walked for about 6 hours that day in very hot and direct sunlight, and hadn't quite adapted to the drastic change in weather that Winnipeg had! We were so excited to be with them and couldn't wait to start our 2 week adventure with all 6 of us!