sea lion attacks tourist!

i am back in cuenca and it is good to back at the base. or maybe, it is just good to be back on land for more than a stretch of an hour. although, the repercussions of the week long catamaran ride

around the galapagos are still being felt as i stare at the computer swishing and swashing like the waves ofthe ocean. sometimes, i need to take a deep breath and remind myself that i am on stable ground. it isn´t too bad as i can reminisce about the fucking amazing animals that i saw and swam with and the cool people i shared a lovely dream vacation with. hmmm... some reflections-

*the aforementioned subject above refers to the male sea lion that chased me, mistaking me for one of its male competitors. that made me doubt the shape of my body and the slimming down i have done- is it all an illusion? i dont think i am that big. or maybe they are near sighted mammals...

*once again, i met a group of cool dutch people.

*adrenaline and terror equals it really can give one superhuman powers- at that precise moment when the sea lion came after me, i turned into a record breaking freestyle swimmer.

*oh, the giant tortoisess are so cute!

*we were fed like queens and kings with a top notch chef on board that catered to all our gastronomic needs. lekker!

*in Baños, we biked halfway to the jungle. let me remind you that i hadn´t been on a bike for over 5 years so my cofidence wasn´t all there, yet i made it miraculously, dodging buses and trucks passing us not particularly driving like they cared for these stupid tourists getting in their way on this dodgy road with a cliff and no railing on one side. i can give myself a pat on the back for that one. i won't even go into details about being stuck in a tunnel w/no light reflectors as this truck came speeding towards us...

well, those seem to the highlights of my trip. now i am apartment hunting and i might just have a place in a couple days. need to get out of this hostal- it just so happens that this is where is the prostitutes go and i discovered peepholes in many of the bathrooms and rooms. hmm, not the best place if you are looking for privacy or a decent chat with the other customers.

la selva, part 2, la souvenir

Ok, so here is the sequel to the jungle story- ready?
well, i have been enjoying myslef, relaxing and going on wonderful hikes in Urubamba, when I decided to accompany my friend back to Cusco (she came to visit me) anyway, being the mother-like person that she is, she decided to check up on all my bug bites, see how they were doing. i have a couple bites that i thought were very infected and so i took, once again, on the advice of a doctor, antibiotics. i really am so fed up with these peruvian doctors. i even went to
the best most modern hospital, actually snuck in, made friendly with a doctor and he helped me out. anyway, i digress. so, yesterday, i was hanging out with my friend and as she was cleaning up my "infected bites" she looks up at me and says, -"Linda i saw something moving." OK, ha ha funny silvia, quit with your stupid humor. But she didnt break out in laughter. at this point, my heart was racing and we both struggled to examine closely what the hell she exactly saw.
mind you, it was a bit difficult because the bite happens to be on my left breast. after a few minutes, lo and behold and oh my fucking god, there we saw a little white head pop out and pop right back in. all right, i am calmer than i expect myself to be, but burst out in fits of
hyperventilation/naseauting-because-i-am-so-disgusted-stupor every 5 minutes or so. we rush to the hospital once again (sneak our way in{love the loose bureacracy here}) and the entire staff is so curious i have the fortune of having 7 or 8 doctors personally tending to me, the highest quality doctors in cusco. however, in the end, they couldnt get the bugger out of my breast and they didn{t have this one plant that forces the larva to come out and breathe.
it kept popping in and out, evading the nimble fingers of the doctor and tweezers each time. so we called our friend who lives in the jungle and she recommended to put tape over the breast and the critter sticks to it in efforts to get oxygen to breathe. we searched restaraunts to ask for a litle bit of this plant(it is like parsley) and we bought some cigarettes (because the smoke
is supposed to make the critter come out for air) and we bought sterile adhesive. and then we went home and after about an hour of using the plant extract and smoke, we restorted to the adhesive. and went to bed, nervous. in bed, i had too much time to reflect what was really happening to me. no big deal, at the same time, i couldn't help feeling so nasty and even violated. luckily, the valium kicked in.
well the next morning, we slowly took off the bandage and THERE IT WAS STUCK TO THE DAMN TAPE! just like our jungle friend said. and so we finished it off by pulling it out with tweezers. and it hurt, not to mention, BIG! AND SO GROSS-white, a bit blonger than 1cm, in the shape of a pear and it had black tiny spines in the fatter part of the body that hurt me when we pulled it out. Did i forget to mention that i also had one on my LEG? so, now, i have 2 big
fat wounds in my body, holes literally over 1 cm deep. i am sending my 2 jungle souvenirs to Itai so if you are interested, call him up to see what was gestating(?) in my poor little violated body.
everything seems OK now, they are not known to be more than one. most likely, they were larvas of a butterfly that bury their eggs in wet clothing and the eggs stick to my body and crawl in through a pore. Or, it was a butterlfy larva that was deposited on a biting insect and that insect got rid of it on me. Lovely. a type of miasis, probably a FURONCUlA(español). they get to be about 2 cm at largest and i really dont know how they turn into butterflies. crawl out and bloom, most likely. so now that i have all of you squirming in your seats with the heebie-jeebies, i will sign off.
until my next souvenir-spree.
miss you all.

la selva, part 1

normally i don't do this, but i am succumbing to the mass mail style of telling you all how the hell i am doing down here since more than 4 months have passed and i have finished my job with the language school. first of all- the jungle. My friend and i have made arrangements to fly to Puerto Maldonado, the jungle pueblo near the bolivian border. he is a guide and i was going as a volunteer worker. we were supposed to be at the airport at 6 in the morn b/c the peruvians love bumping your seat right away if you don't show up like 2 hours in advace to get you boarding pass. i get to the airport and my friend is nowhere to be found. i don't worry b/c i mean, i did get there 2 hours early like i was instructed, being the punctual person that i am and not having quite adjusted to what the "peruvian time" means. anyway, time ticks away and i decide to call his hostal. the lady at the desk says she can't find him b/c she just arrived herself at the hostal. "OK, so why don't you try knocking on his door?" Duh. she tried, but there was no answer. and she was so abrupt to get off the phone. peruvians really love the idea of Customer Service. anyway, 15 minutes later, i call again be/c it is 7am, the time the plane is supposed to take off. thank god for peruvian time, the plane is late. at this point, i am sweating beads and frantically pacing, hoping that he is on the way. so finally, with the sencond call, she bangs on his door like i so kindly told her to do and he wakes up. and he rushes to get to the airport. meanwhile, i run to the desk of the airline, and beg and scream to not sell his ticket and it seems like they already have. not surprising. the pilot is standing next to me getting the numbers of passengers and they are radio-ing everyone to start boarding to leave. the manager is pissed that i am telling him to save 1 more seat for a passenger who is 2.30 minutes late. my friend finally gets there, pale and wreaking of a hangover and we get a seat only b/c the ticket girl was so kind enough to sneak one extra boarding pass for him. so we get to Puerto Maldonado, where we meet the owners of the lodge. i was warned by my friend about the Macho-extremismo of the men here, and i saw right away the truth about this warning (ie, the men only talk about sex, the size of their dicks, sex, drink till they are pissed(drunk), sex, and how many women they can fuck). the first thing the husband says to my friend is, "so, you fucking her?" he doens't even greet me. i think to myself, "2 weeks of this? great." however, the 4 hour boat ride up the Tambopata river calms me down a bit and i am in awe with the fact that i am in the jungle. crazy. we get there and find that our rooms are huts and the shower is the river. i love it. oh, did i mention that we saw egrits and herons and capybaras and caymans on our way there? so, basically, i was there as a volunteer which meant planting banana trees and building bathrooms, but b/c there was such a large number of tourists, i ended up being the waitress, socializer, even the dishwasher. it wasn't bad. i had so much free time between the hikes through the rainforest and bathing in the river and sitting in the hammocks reading my dostoyevsky. so bathing in the river, at first, was a scary concept. there are piranhas, caymans, electric eels, these scary parasite fish that follow your urine tract and burrow inside and literally eat you out and have to be surgically removed. however, i thought if others can do it, so can i. and i loved it. i was scared only once when i felt a bite on my foot, but it turned out to be these small fish that are attratcted to dead skin. besides that, i saw scarlet macaws, blue and yellow macaws, several types of monkeys, sometimes, right outside my hut window. and all kinds of exotic birds and rodents. not to mention that i got really close with all the biting insects. omigod, right now, my body looks like it is diseased from all the bites. repellent worked sometimes, but they loved attacking my butt the most when i was going potty. and there was so drama going on, it is worth telling. the same owner (husband) that greeted me so charmingly in the beginning stole the lodge boat to go see his 13 year old girlfriend. meanwhile, there is no structure nor discipline with the peruvians when it comes to drinking. all the alcohol that we brought up for the tourists disappeared the 1st night, thanks to the hubby and the peruvian hired help. then the uncle who ususally cooks decided to leave and never come back because the girl he likes dosen't like him. he left in a drunken-pissy fury. who needs a television when you've got this? anyway, i am back in cusco. and i am looking to leave. i love this place, but my time is up. especially since i am not going back to work, i feel a bit in limbo and lost. one sad thing about living here. i made friends only on a superifcial basis b/c they leave so quickly and it get tiresome after a while. don't get me wrong - i do have a handful of friends from the netherlands and elsewhere, and thank god i have my one peruvian friend, sylvia. so until next time, hope all is well with everyone!

i miss you all! Linda