Our Island Home

Finally made it.... to the start of the Inca Trail. "What a couple of flamin' drongos," thought the lady at the GOL airlines counter at Manaus airport, Brazil. We arrived at the airport super relaxed and excited for our journey into Peru. We had just updated the budget and were about to buy a beer in celebration of ¨reigning it back in¨. We were VERY early for our flight, but thought we would try and check-in anyway. The look on the lady's face said it all... We had read the itinerary wrong and were 12 hours late for our flight.  Cue sinking feeling.... Rookie error. And Brad's first ever missed flight. That is pretty impressive for a FIFO worker. The GOL workers all winced on our behalf as they looked up alternative flight options. We were now one of "those" people. And I can tell you, it is not as glamourous as they make it out to be on the movies. A flight that took four times as long and cost about four times as much, and we...

We planned a trip to a national park in the North of Brazil called Lencois Maranhenses. The trip was a fair bit of effort involving two extremely slow and tedious bus rides and one leg only possible by 4WD. Trying to get this 4WD trip to Barreirinhas from Paulino Neves was an experience in itself.  Lencois Maranhenses NP We arrived in a back water town called Paulino Neves, assuming there would be a tourist information place to help us out. We assumed wrong. All we found there was some tumble weed and a lot of people with blank looks on their faces. I glanced over at a group of barely awake people sitting in the main square and decided I would attempt to get some information from them. Speaking my very poor Espanol, I went around the circle trying to find anyone who could help us (instead of just laughing at us). After 10 minutes of people shaking their heads at me, it was clear we had missed the last 4WD to Barreirinhas.  Then suddenly, all of ...