Today was a tough day. We had to admit that we were beaten in a way. After 2 1/2 months of struggle, some hard work by some wonderful people trying to do a good thing, we had to face the fact that we are leaving for Peru in two days, and our shoes are not.
Local hero Kelvin Martyniuk had no idea what he was letting himself in for when he volunteered to help us with the logistics of getting the shoes into the country.
Today we had to make some tough decisions.
1. Postpone? Our Miami to Lima leg could be postponed at a cost of $230 pp. Our Winnipeg to Fort Lauderdale leg would have cost about $300 pp to postpone. EVERYONE would have had a terrible time trying to find holidays - the kids would have to miss school - pre-booked and paid hotels in Florida would be lost - $600 gone - not an easy decision right now.
2. Postpone but go on a holiday in Florida. This idea had some merit. We could go and have a nice holiday. Rebook the Lima part and still enjoy spring break without losing all the value of the Florida flights and hotels. But - again - the missing school/work etc and all the extra cost....is this the best choice?
3. Smuggle shoes - yes, you heard that correctly ladies and gentlemen. Us hardworking, honest citizens are going to do our best to smuggle the most shoes we possibly can into the country. We've been told it's not that difficult - someone may get caught - and that wouldn't be fun - but most of the shoes will make it through. Then we will make arrangements for someone in Trujillo to distribute the other shoes when they finally make it there - and take pictures.
There are 8 of us going altogether. We will have to pay $30 per extra bag - that's on the Air Canada leg. But we figure we can get 100 pairs of shoes down there anyway.
Our Argentinian friend Ezi is going with us to help us with our language barrier. This is a big relief. But he is leaving tomorrow morning. He won't be taking any extra shoes.
We'll catch up with Ezi in Miami, enjoy a couple of days - actually I think we'll primarily be fretting....and then head to Lima altogether on Saturday night.
So - keep your fingers crossed that we will make it into the country with all our shoes.
Quite the adventure.
Logistics king Kelvin wants one more day to try to get permission to ship the shoes. So we'll make the final call in the morning. But at this point it looks like Fuze thru Shoes is making smugglers out of our team.
Stay tuned.
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