Peru trip & house move: 15 June 08

Blog the first …. I shall probably not figure out the formatting right away and I certainly am not going to wordsmith these posts to make them grammatically correct.

I still am bewildered to find ourselves in the situation of last-minute preparations for a three-week trip to Peru and moving house at the same time. Regarding the latter, we have a contract on our San Antonio house, most of our stuff (and there’s a lot of it) goes into storage and we plan to rent an apartment or condo in Austin for a year of so while we decide what we want to do when we grow up.

The house sale went faster and easier than we had anticipated. We got 96% of our asking price within six weeks of listing; that’s not bad in today’s market even though we clearly asked less than we would have done a year or so ago. Boxes, boxes, boxes …. assuming our next place will be smaller than this one, we are supposed to be downsizing but while its easy to get rid of stuff you do not like, its hard to trash those things that have memories, however “not needed” they might be. Once again we test the definitions of “need” and “want”. Valerie, take note.

Peru will be an adventure: hiking, kayaking, mountain-biking and all at altitudes of about 10,000 – 13,000 feet in the middle of the Andean winter plus a trip to the rain forest. We are limited to 44 pounds per person so packing enough cold-weather gear for all those activities is proving to be a challenge. Add in obsessing about the notorious GI problems that Peru is famous for, compounded by the prospect of packing up when we get back to San Antonio …. no wonder my sleep habits have become erratic. However, the decision on whether to take comfortable, slow-drying underwear or less-comfortable, fast-drying versions is put firmly into perspective.