Saturday, July 11, 2009

oy

Claire mentioned that she felt like a stroke victim that had been hit by a bus this morning. Yeah. That's about right. I woke up at 8 am quite chipper and realized I was still a bit drunk. Maren was up too, so we raced to Jack's for breakfast, eager to get something to eat before the hangover officially kicked in. We ended up at a table with an American ex-pat who lived in St. John. Maren was able to carry on a nice conversation with him but I started feeling sick and could only nod and shovel grilled cheese into my mouth.

We walked the long, uphill road back to Pampawasi and found the rest of our crew peeking out of their rooms and looking a bit shabby. When the boys opened their door, the four of us girls almost yakked. One boy, who shall remain nameless, had gotten sick in the night and it was still all over the floor. It did not smell good. Another boy was wandering around in a towel, having realized he threw away his only clothes last night...everything else was at the laundromat. He had to walk to the Lavanderia wearing just the towel. I have photos of this but not sure they're appropriate for posting...

No one had the energy to move and the boys' room was too nasty to enter, so all of us save Ralph ended up napping in the girls' room like a pile of hamsters. After a while we finally made it out for a bit then came back to find that our 8th team member, Gillie, had arrived. I'm sure we were an impressive lot! Everyone was hungry so we set off looking for a snack and found ourselves in a dicey cafe called...Cafe Snack. The food wasn't great but we ate it anyway (Ralph drank three smoothies) and afterwards we went to El Molino, which is a huge black market shopping place. There were rows and rows of stuff, some of it counterfeit and some real. Most of us didn't buy anything (no one wants to haul stuff around in their luggage) so we just wandered and marveled over the sights.

Dinner that night was back at Indigo, which also happens to be a Thai restaurant. However, only Maren, Brendan, Claire, Vienna, Gillie and I went. Ralph and Parker were too hungover for curry. :-) I actually hadn't planned on drinking but somehow we decided to order Pisco Sours with dinner. Then we had a second round. Then a third. Each round was stronger than the last, and before I knew it, I was loopy. Everyone was feeling tired, but it was Saturday night and there was a band playing at Loki, so Richard, Brendan and I went to check things out. It was happy hour at Loki (happy hour is super late in Peru), so we double-fisted gin and tonics before heading back to the hotel.

Maren and Gillie (my roommates) had gone to bed and I spent a good 5-10 minutes haggling with the woman at the front desk to try and get my room key...

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