“Will I get a passport stamp in Lima?”

“No, we’re not going through immigration, just waiting at the airport and changing planes.”

“Damn. I don’t have a Peru stamp on my new passport, and I haven’t been to Lima in ages.”

Spoiled kid. I mean, how many eleven-year-olds complain they “haven’t been to Peru in ages”?

To get to South America, we traded Flair Airlines for another major low-cost company—Sky Airlines. We both had good memories of it even though we couldn’t remember when and where we took it. Somewhere in Chile, probably… maybe to Patagonia?

Cancún International Airport was packed but it was easy to join the right queue.

“This has to be the flight to Cincinnati. They all have American passports, no way they’re going to Peru.”

Hey, I was right. Assuming and stereotyping can work in specific situations!

The five-hour flight from Cancún to Lima was very smooth and the seats were more comfortable than with Flair Airlines. We landed at 10 p.m., went through a security checkpoint and straight to the gate.

I had about 60 soles left from our 2019 trip so I splurged on snacks and a couple of empanadas—my dinner since there was no meal on board.

Bad idea. I shouldn’t have offered Mark all-you-can-eat junk food. He puked as soon as we took off.

We took turns cleaning the blanket and his pants, while acknowledging that at least, he had waited until the third and last flight to puke. It could have been a lot worse if the “accident” had happened the day before.

Other than that, it was another easy five-hour flight and we finally landed in São Paulo at 6:45 a.m., technically 4:45 a.m. for us (Canadian, Mexico and Peruvian time).

The early morning light was amazing. Everything looked so fresh, so green!

Well, everything but us. We still had a long way to go before eventually resting at the Airbnb. We went through immigration, then we picked up our backpacks and tried to figure out the next step. Taxi? Uber? I also had to text the host because I didn’t have the Airbnb door code. Unfortunately, apparently, we couldn’t check in early because the current guests were leaving at noon. Damn. Oh, and I also had to remember to speak Portuguese, not Spanish—in Mexico, everybody was talking to me in Spanish, not in “special gringo English” (and yes, I’m a bit proud of it, I guess I don’t look American!).

So we took an Uber and watched São Paulo waking up slowly with a Sunday morning hungover. We killed a few hours waiting in a Japanese fast-food restaurant, the only place open that early on Rua August, a street more famous for nightlife than breakfast, and we were eventually able to check in at 3 p.m.

Two cups of coffee later, I was awake enough to smile and relax—we made it to Brazil, it’s (almost) summer and I’m alive again!

What am I expecting from this trip? I want to get inspired, see real people, see the world and maybe understand different perspectives. I want to write enjoyable content not generated by AI and not designed to make you click and scroll. I want to create something because right now the world is a dark place and I need to see the light or at the very least some light and sunshine.