Whew! Crisis resolved

We are fine-the ATM worked fine today so we have money and are doing great. We are all looking forward to going to Amazon tomorrow early. Tonight we have a group welcome dinner. Today we took an optional tour to what was described as the slums but really, it was much better than that. We saw all kinds of development, and we walked through a neat market. A little girl named Rosa who was 8 followed us all over the market and we enjoyed her. It was a fun adventure. We went to the ocean and to a nice beach and fishing village. It is the school holiday here now so families are vacationing together. We ended up in Miraflores where Jim and I stopped and had a great pizza (no garlic or onions) at Luigis and walked to the Indian market and found a few things. We can leave our carryons here so that will make the rest of the trip easier and we have that stuff already packed. We come back here just for a dayroom at the end of the trip.

Forgetting my orthodics was not smart as we walked and walked today and my back and feet surely felt it. We did all we wanted to but I won't make that mistake again. Or at least I hope not! Our group is very congenial and there are several bird lovers so think that maybe on the rest of the trip, we will have fun and lots of people with knowledge we will enjoy.

Just wanted to update and let you know that our crisis was resolved. The BBVA Compass is EVERYWHERE here so it was easy to find a bank to use just to give us that extra confidence. Having money makes things a lot less stressful. ha. So all you who were worried about whether I could buy souvenirs, fear not! The Madge is back on track! We had a good night last night and got organized and repacked and it was a good evening. We needed a bit of downtime to get organized and ready to move on.

We leave early in the AM-like a 6AM flight. So I am not sure when I can post again-probably not til next Sunday when we are back here at the hotel, but who knows! I will blog along and put it online whenever I get to an internet.