Falling behind horribly in these dispatches, and set to get worse. No Montezuma's revenge to be blamed, as the iron hull of my stomach, varnished with flora diverse back in the day, holds strong through ropy sopa and greasy pollo.
Simply put, i'm discovering how taxing the holidays can be. Never have i been forced to be so organised, so attentive to details, so discerning as to what good value may be, and so wary of my surrounds. This is always a Good Thing for a slopsack such as I sometimes am. BackPacker University may endow me with much, but will I ever graduate? Feeble metaphors aside, the temptation to postpone has been great. But this time, at least, IŽll wind my way back to life.
I'm now in La Paz, Bolivia. And the moment i got here i sat down with the hotel tour operator to thrash out how i'm to manage a jungle tour, a pampas tour, and then a tour to the salt lakes of the south, all before my flight out from Lima on the 12th of July (which, incidentally, should be the date you will be set free from my tedious tales and travails). Sadly, Chile will have to wait for another day.
I could kick myself for overstaying in Peru, but Cuzco was a blast. Thousands of gringos and locals had descended for the festival. Come the chill of the night, the street processions (which included two giant guinea pig floats copulating on the main drag) were replaced by milling masses bopping ever so drunkenly to gyrating pop latinas in strings onstage. I fled screaming, shielding my eyes lest i be turned to stone, but there was no respite in the pubclubs, stacked to the rafters with peoples and more peoples. I have to confess that the cheese factor in music does not count for much when one is in Peru. At least not after a merrygoround of happy hour crawls...
All this, and the bonus of fellow travellers, never as open as in the here and now. What happens when we all disperse and head home? Do we retain the bloom of the solo traveller in us, uninhibited and accommodating?
Needless to say, my vampiric wanderings took their toll on the days that followed. Macchu Picchu? I went, I marvelled, I returned, all in the cossetted space of a day. Many have waxed thick splodges of their souls on that already, so I had better leave you here...