Peruvian Week

For some reason, I haven't had the time or perhaps the inclination, to keep up the blog since leaving Cartagena. It's true that I hate Lima, and it sucked the energy out of me. It's not a pleasant place for walkers: a sprawling congested constant flow of traffic; hard to cross every street because no one stops at pedestrian crossings unless there's a policeman there directing the traffic. And it's hard to breathe the carbon monoxide soup of air. But after getting back from Cartagena, I became violently ill just after a rather tasty lunch at the La Paz cafe. I don't think that lunch made me ill because the symptoms started coming on just after leaving the café. I think I was sick before that, possibly a result of something I ate or drank in Cartagena. 

That Tuesday morning we'd booked a three day tour to the south, going to Ica, Huacachina and Las Islas Ballestas at a travel agency we passed that morning. By 5.00 p.m. that day, I didn't know whether I'd be able to travel on a bus for the necessary hours with the violent diarrhoea and the projectile vomiting that had taken over my body. Alex walked back to the travel agency to ask whether we could put off the departure for a couple of days, perhaps to Friday, until I was well enough to travel. 

By the time he'd arrived and started negotiating, I had thrown up my lunch and evacuated my bowels completely, and I was feeling a lot better. Eddy, the travel agent, said that we couldn't leave on Friday because bookings were so heavy for the weekend, but we could go on Monday. That decided me; I was not going to spend one day longer than necessary in Lima. I wanted to flee as far away as possible. I told Alex to cancel the postponement. I would travel the next morning, at 7.30 as per the original plan.