Here we go...

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I’m in the Miami airport following the first leg of my 24-hour journey to the Amazon. The shuttle picked me up a little before 6 am and dropped me off at the DFW terminal nearly three hours before my flight! Fortunately I was able to stop off at the American Airlines Admiral’s Club to kill time and catch up on a few things before catching the flight to Miami.

Now I am in Florida awaiting my next flight to Lima in about 3½ hours. It seems like much of the construction here is finally finished. For a long time they were working on many places with ugly white wooden walls with “pardon our construction” signs. What I saw today didn’t look all that special, though. This is definitely not one of my favorite airports.

Even though I have made this trip several times, it’s still as exciting to think that soon I will be traveling down the majestic and mysterious Amazon River as it was when I was a child with dreams of visiting the mighty river.

So the plan for the rest of the day and night is to catch my 5:10 flight to Lima, sleep on the plane, if possible, then kill time in the Lima airport for a few hours (after passing through immigration, baggage, customs, and the LAN counter) before my 4:20 flight to Iquitos tomorrow morning. With any luck, I’ll be drinking coffee with friends by the Amazon by 8:00 am.

Keep your fingers crossed…

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