Peruvian Perdition

It was the day that´s been waiting to happen since I left Melbourne. You know, the day everything goes wrong? It finally happened the day I got to Peru. Having said goodbye to my family I hopped on the plane (late, thanks to monster queues at Ezeiza) and arrived safe and sound at Lima airport. So far, so good. Well, new country, new currency, so I went to try and change my left over pesos for New Soles. The banks and exchange bureaus laughed in the face of my pesos - turns out they only change USD, Euros, Yen, and one or two others. Fine. There´s always the ATM.

Armed with my Visa card I went to the ATM and requested 150 soles, only to be informed that the ATM was witholding my credit card "for my protection". What? Protection from overspending? To my credit I didn´t freak out, took a deep breath, found the number for Visa and tried to call them. And tried and tried. It turns out making a collect call from Peru is on a similar difficulty level than say, a NASA space shuttle launch. Plus it´s impossible to make collect calls from public telephones (I found out after an hour of fruitless attempts) so there was nothing to do but wait till I got to the hotel in Cusco. I sat down with my guide to Peru and tried to concentrate on figuring out what I was going to see when I got there. Finally it was almost time to board the plane to Cusco and I found my gate and sat down. I got chatting to a cool American guy sitting by me, when we started comparing passports. When I looked closely at mine, it appeared as though the immigrations lady had stamped my passport for entry 09/01/06 (all ok) but also for exit the same day. Which means I was supposed to leave that day or I´d be overstaying my welcome in Peru. What followed was half an hour of mild worry (I´d sort it out at the immigrations place in Cusco, if indeed there was one) until I finally realised with relief that the exit stamp was from Argentina. Iiiiidiot.

So now I only had one problem to deal with, not two, and I relaxed the rest of the flight to Cusco. I landed with no problems, got my luggage, met Javier, the owner of the hostel I was staying at, and he took me out to the car to take me to the hostel. I had my backpack on my back and my daypack on my front, and unfortunately in the airport carpark there are some well hidden kerbs, one of which I immediately tripped over. Thanks to the amount of luggage I was carrying I wasn´t able to put my arms out to break my fall, which means the fall was broken with my nose. Javier was awesome, took me to the airport first aid desk where they cleaned me up and gave me an injection for the swelling and the pain (intramuscular, yay). They charged me 10 soles (which of course I didn´t have) which Javier lent me out of his own pocket. He took me to the hostel, made an appointment with a local doctor, then took me there on his way to tae-bo. Unfortunately the doctor was running late, and he missed his tae-bo class, but he said it was more important to make sure I was ok. To be honest he was pretty much my knight in shining armour as even with my Spanish I would never have been able to do it all without him. The radiography place the doctor sent us to to get my nose x-rayed was shut, we had to try three before we found an open one. They charged fifty soles for the x-rays which Javier again lent me out of his own pocket, but luckily the radiographer said she didn´t think it was fractured. Back to the doctor who had left for the day - "come back tomorrow at half past six". Fine.

Next day I was waiting dutifully at the surgery at 06:25. And waiting and waiting. I wasn't worried, as I figured this was down to the vagaries of "Latino time", where 06:30 can mean anytime between 05:30 and say, 09:00. Finally at about 10 or 20 past seven someone came out of the surgery.

"Are you waiting for someone?"
"Er, yes. Dr. Wilson. Do you know when he will be here?"
"None of the doctors are here. They only practise here in the afternoons."
"But the nurses told me to be here at half past six."

Even as I said it, the horrible truth was dawning on me. Yes, half past six. The half past six that was coming up in about 11 hours and 40 minutes. Apparently no doctors in Cusco have private practise in the daytime (strange but true) but the elusive Dr. Wilson could be found during the day at a local hospital. I resolved to go and find him - 5 hour wait be damned - just as soon as I did something about the aching hole in my stomach. Back to the hostel for breakfast where I told Vicky my sad, doctorless story. Within the hour Javier let me know that he had arranged to have the famous Dr. Wilson meet me at his surgery at 11:00. How? I have no idea. Why? He's just a nice guy.

Killed time until 11:00, then to the doctor's to await the verdict...was the Inca hike still on the cards or not? After he cleaned up the cut on my nose again and did a bit of poking and prodding, he looked at my x-rays and said, "I can't really tell anything from these. Where did you get them taken?" Shit. More poking. "Well," he continued, "Be careful on the hike and call me when you get back and I'll tell you if we need to operate.". Hmph. Not a very convincing diagnosis but I was going to Machu Picchu! (On foot). He prescribed me antibiotics so the cut didn´t get infected and anti-inflammatories for the swelling. These cost 100 soles which I paid for using my US dollars I had brought to pay for the Inca hike.

Well, that was my nose sorted but I was on my last soles and I had to pay the balance on the Inca hike (which I had brought with me from Argentina but had to spend on food, lodging and medicine since I had no credit card). I finally got through to Visa and got USD$200 in time to pay the hike (for which I was leaving the following day, the 11th). I went to the United Mice offices and we had our pre-briefing at 19:00. I met Jen, Nadelle, Bridey and Glenn who would be my co-torturees on the trip, and Solay, our guide. I also ended up having to buy some stuff I needed and hadn´t brought: torch, wet weather pants, beanie (stupidly sent to Boulder ahead of time), coca leaves and a walking stick (apparently there´s a lot of stairs on the trail which I was soon to find out for myself, to my chagrin). Luckily all this stuff was relatively cheap but my budget was also tiny, since 140 of those 200 dollars had gone to the hike people. After that my nightmare two days was finally over and I headed back to the hostel to sleep. Even that was prolonged as my mother rang me to let me know I had to talk to the travel insurance people right away or I wouldn´t be able to get money back for my nose-related expenses. Spent half an hour on the phone to the insurance company, then to my mother again, by which time it was 23:00 and I had to get up for the hike at 04:00. I collapsed into bed after a lukewarm shower for a restless night´s sleep.

Eventually as I dropped off to sleep and began to unplug myself from the VISA and nose débâcles, I began to mentally prepare myself for the next day - the Inca Trail! After eight years of dreaming, I was finally going! I was still a little anxious about how my body was going to cope with the Andes, but quietly confident that even if I had to push it to its limits, my body could handle whatever the Peruvian terrain threw at it.