Fri, 28 Mar 2008 12:21:03 +0000
I was very clear when I was planning this trip that not every day would be spent out in the world seeing the sights and immersing myself in foreign cultures. Everyone needs a little time in their shell, and today was one of those days. But for completeness, I'll blog about my day anyway.
I'm feeling much better now, but still rather light-headed and lethargic. Despite this, I consider myself good to go for Machu Picchu. I slogged my way up Jiu Zhai Gou in Sechuan despite being feverish and miserable, and things are nowhere near that bad now. It's not like I'm going to trek the entire Inca trail here. But a day of treating myself rather more gently seemed in order.
I spent some time in an internet cafe, and took the opportunity to get some health advice from Wikipedia. Man, that's a bad idea. For a start, Wikipedia confidently asserts that I'm going to be sick for 3.8 days. Given that I consider this crisis to be over after 24 hours, this makes me worry that I'm headed for a relapse. I'm also told that I shouldn't be taking Imodium, for complex reasons that probably involve my intestines bursting out of my belly Alien style. And I'm told that I need to visit a doctor, a laughable idea given my current circumstances. But bear in mind that this is the same authority that convinced me to wear long-sleeved shirts and jeans in the heat of Santa Cruz, so you know, screw it.
HSBC has very kindly agreed to unblock my cards, and promised not to block them again for the next three months no matter which countries I visit. On the other hand, while T-Mobile has accepted the fact that I've paid them EUR 15, they refuse to actually credit this to my phone until I tell them which SIM card I want it credited to. I only have one card, but this makes no difference. Telling T-Mobile which card to use involves using their website, which suffers an internal server error as soon as I log in. This is clearly going to be an ongoing drama. I do have my UK SIM card if I really need to make an emergency call.
Bad news for the blog: there will be no photos for some time. I'm still taking photos, but for extremely dull technical reasons I can't get them into the Nokia or onto a computer in an internet cafe. I need a micro SD card, but all I could get here was a normal SD card. (At the outrageous price of 90 soles for half a gigabyte. I guess that money will benefit the local economy somehow.)
Also expensive, but worth it, was having my laundry done. 27 soles is probably what I'd pay to use a laundromat in Europe, but it still seems expensive here. Nevertheless, it's nice to offload that problem onto someone else, and it's an extremely good feeling to have a backpack full of clean clothes, rather than the somewhat ripe collection that's built up over the last week. They even washed my baseball cap. Note to self: white is a bad colour for a baseball cap, when you sweat as much as I do.
But mostly today I slept and moved around very, very slowly. I did manage to eat some lunch: two bananas and a cheese bun, but I'm not really up for dinner. I am highly, highly confident that there are enough calories floating around my system right now to make up for this. Tonight I take the bus to Cuzco, and I expect to sleep like the dead for the entire trip.