I’ve blogged from the foot of Mt. Everest. I’ve blogged from a walled Arab city near the border of Somalia, where wild hyenas roam the town at night. But Steve and I have never been in a city more isolated than Leticia (Colombia), and its sister town across the Brazilian border, Tabatinga. There is no road to this place from the outside world. We’re surrounded by vast impenetrable jungle. You can only get here by flying in (as we did Sunday afternoon) or by boat, as we expect to do in a few hours, for the first section of our journey down the Amazon River across Brazil to the Atlantic. 

The only way the Internet could be slower here is if it didn’t work at all. It’s as slow as the pace of the rubber oozing from the tree we saw on a walk through the jungle yesterday. It’s way too slow for me to hope to upload any blog posts with photos. 

Hence, my plan is to write as I normally would, almost daily describing our experience on the boat. But it may be almost a week before I can upload anything (in Manaus). I will try to upload this now. If it appears on my website, I succeeded! (I will also try to send photos via Twitter, which seems to work a bit better.)

---

My friends often laugh at me because I pack so early, often weeks in advance. For at least one or two trips, I’ve been known to have all my clothes stuffed into my little roller bag two months ahead of time. This makes me feel calmer, knowing that at least this task can be crossed off my To Do list. I also like being able to refine my choices as we draw closer to departure.

For our current trip, however, to Brazil, I only loaded my gear in the suitcase on Thursday. That’s because we will spend most of our time in and around the Amazon River, a notoriously buggy place. We wanted to spray all of our apparel with Permethrin (an insect repellant), close to the departure date. Above you see almost everything I’m taking, hanging in the closet to dry. (Steve nobly sprayed it all outdoors, as it’s not great to breathe.)

Now we’re in Dallas, waiting to board our flight to Bogota in Colombia, where we’ll sleep tonight. Tomorrow afternoon we’ll fly south to the jungle town of Leticia. There the real adventure will begin.

---