LAD Tour part I - Joe Gets the Call Up

 When I first found out about the OTN LAD Tour I immediately volunteered to join the other ACE Directors on their tour of Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, and Costa Rica ... after all one of my duties as an ACE Director is to share my knowledge with people's around the world and this was a part of the world I hadn't visited before. I was so enthusiastic I even agree to go on the side trips to Cuzco and Machu Picchu and the Galapagos Islands. I didn't even give Stanley not being able to go a thought, any opportunity to stand in for him and I am there.


I accompanied Dan Morgan on his trip from Seattle to Lima though I did so with some misgivings given I had heard from Stanley that the last time he flew with him Stanley had ended up losing a food fight at the 8th anniversary party of Miracle. I'm wasn't sure I could ever completely trust Morgan after that.

Things were Ok arriving in Lima and I was starting to relax but it began to go sideways as soon as we got on the plane at the airport in Lima to fly to Cusco. Morgan got me a seat in an exit row and the flight attendants insisted that I read the emergency procedures card. English: Ok. Vietnamese: Ok. But Spanish I was immediately bundled into an overhead bin without even the slightest thought to my comfort. 


 

The flight was only a little over an hour so I survived but on arriving at our hotel in Cusco I had a bout of altitude sickness. I sure wished I'd purchased an OxiShot while we were still at the airport. 





 
Lucky for me the natives are extremely friendly they introduced me to some of their local customs, to a distant relative, and came to my aid with copious quantities of coca tea.





By nightfall I was fortified and ready for my trip, early the next morning, to Machu Picchu.

Stanley will regret missing this trip (hehe).