Huancayo loves me

it seems that nasty headache i had when i arrived in lima didn´t want to go away and was only a foreshadowing of nastier things to come. i ended up developing a fever. so i slept some more. woke up in the evening and felt ok. i made friends with some dutch guys in the hostel and we played pool adn i drank a beer. then i went back to bed and was so cold that my teeth were chattering. i had my sleeping bag and 2 wool blankets. i should have been fine.
the next day i woke up with a fever again but dragged my ass out of bed to walk around the town with emily thinking it would do me some good. when i got back i was nauseous and cold again and went to bed at 4pm shivering. woke up the next morning with a fever and a full body rash. i puked and felt a bit better so we hailed a taxi to the bus station. we had booked bus tickets to Huancayo a few days before. it is a lovely town and i would have liked it if i had been feeling better. on Friday i decided i wasnt getting better so i went to a clinic that the lonely planet said spoke english. they didn´t but luckily emily could translate for me. the clinic doctor took me to the hospital because he wanted blood tests done. a dermatologist, 3 med students and 3 nurses plus the first doctor and emily and I were all in the small office and he examined me in front of them all! i was the freak show. he even yanked up my top so they could see the rash better and gave them all a good viewing of my bra. then a nurse took 3 vials of blood and i almost puked again. then they admitted me to the hospital where 3 more doctors examined me and asked all the same questions. one guy thought that my rash was from not showering! they also wanted to know what i´d eaten. emily and i had had eaten all the same foods up to that point. when she said we´d had orange juice from a street vendor they were shocked.¨who drinks from street vendors?` he said and they all laughed much to our embarrassment. i stand by the street juice it tastes great. the peru food we have found to be not so great and peru hospital food is even worse. anyhow, it was incredible service at the hospital i got same day lab results, which were all negative.
i got hooked me up to IV that night. one of the nurses kept telling me to not be so sad and ``Huancayo loves you^^ in Spanish.
i had to really convince 3 doctors this morning that i was feeling good enough to leave. the rash is gone thank god. i´m just lathargic today. emily is out looking for a bus tickets outta here. Huacayo may love me but i´m not loving it at the moment.

made it to Lima

monday morning 6am sharp emily and i caught a taxi to the vancouver airport. i started regretting that i hadn´t paid the extra money to go on emily´s flight with her. i surprised myself by managing to sleep uncomfortably most of the way to houston texas. my houston to lima seat wasn´t so great. i had an extremely large lady sitting behind me and she constantly used my chair to pull herself up. it was so annoying. i watched mr and mrs smith. such a bad movie. when i arrived in the lima airport, an emergency was sounding and lights flashing. i couldn´t understand the annoucement just attentione attentione....i was in a line for the customs agent and the guy in front of me and i couldn´t decide if we should run for the nearest stairwell or not. no one else was paying attention to it. so we stayed in line and 15 min later it stopped. i was a little freaked out. not a good intro to the country. since my backpack had been checked at the very last minute due to there being no room in the overhead compartments i had to pick it up from the baggage carousel. i hadn´t had a chance to tie all the straps up and when i went to reach it my bag was stuck to the conveyor belt by a strap. no one offered to help me as i struggled with it. i managed to pry it off. next was finding the hostel taxi guy. there were so many people with signs. right when i was about to give up and look for a phone to call the hostel someone called my name out. i turned and there was a guy with a sign saying Point Lodge Nicole. it was so cool. lima is pretty cold. i was freazing last night in my mouldy dorm room. i woke up several times with a pounding headache. then at about 830 emily showed up. we´ve moved into a room for 4 but so far we have it to ourselves. sweet. emily made a friend at the airport and had taken a taxi with two girls one from Lima. tonight we will try to meet them for dinner. tomorrow we will start heading to Cusco and probably meet up with them again. it´s good to go places with locals :)