Running, runny...it all runs together down here.

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So all this and only for a few gallons of tap water? Well, ultraviolet light ¨sterilized¨tap water, but I´m getting ahead of myself.

The last week has been good, necessarily incredibly long, but good. I ended up getting my luggage on about day four post-departure and headed straight up to the hills for some day "treks,"¨aka hiking between villages dodging hairy livestock and a spattering of alpacas. Both the mountains and the people here are beautiful; never have leather-faced, toothless smiles been so appealing or more fitting. The high Andean dress is amazing too, I´ll try to snag some pictures (finally found a charger).

I valiantly fought the urge to kick it gringo style for all of 4 days. My excuse for crossing over was that I was trying to find some people to do some of the treks here unguided, but motives are suspect, I do like me a sandwich with real cheese and coffee with...coffee in it. Regardless, I spent a couple days visiting the whitey establishments but ran into difficulties finding people who wanted to go without a donkey to carry their bags or a guide to cook them real food (does sound kind of nice in hindsight). In the meantime I celebrated Halloween American on the rooftop of a bar with a bunch of peace corps volunteers, followed by an especially dark night of the dead and then a somewhat more animated night of the living. By the way, we should really attempt to adopt the latter two holidays, a four day weekend for Halloween could only make a good thing better. One of the highlights of these few days was this amazing parade of kids carrying these massive paper mache floats (Ahhh! pictures!). Hundreds of kids aged about 5 through 18, screaming, ecstatic, high on life if you will, dancing in the street carrying giant replicas of Bart Simpson with his pants around his ankles or tweety bird smoking a cigarette, all the while old ladies in traditional clothing telling them they are doing the work of the devil. It´s a sight to be seen.

I finally found this laid back Canadian guy named Mark who wanted to do the Santa Cruz trek with me on Thursday and we scrambled around looking for rental gear and food to catch the 0630 bus to Vacarai. Now, at this time I´d had an intermittent, mild fever for about 3 days and mild diarrhea for one and a half days, but being the forthinking medical student I am, I pushed on.

Twelve hours and five BMs later I was one a five hour baño-less colectivo ride up to 4300 meters, my temperature rising with the altitude. (For future reference colectivo means mini-bus packed phone booth-competition-style with smiling people, always providing new and interesting tests of flexibility) The mountains of the Cordillera Blanca were pretty extraordinary though and as Tylenol seemed to take care of the fever we shipped off down the trail. Unfortunately this denial didn´t last long. At a rate of 12 BM/H, without oral rehydration salts, I made it about three hours in. At that point my little friends discovered they could not only change quantity and velocity but also direction, and we were forced to stop at a refugio which magically appeared over the hill. After a bland quinoa meal cooked with a rented stove, a night's sleep, and no improvement, I had to ask myself, "What would Jesus do?"

I sent my friend from Canada on with a young European couple, tucked tail between chapped cheeks, and waddled my way back down the valley towards an awaiting colectivo.

So back in Huaraz now, looking to head towards Cuzco (?) but have to wait for Mark to get back to get my passport out of hawk with the gear man. Things are looking up and I peed for the first time in 36 hours! Doesn't get much better than that. I'll try to get better pictures from Mark when he gets here, mine in no way do this place justice. And...no more diarrhea stories for a while, I promise-ish. A

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Photos

Huaraz
3090m elevation, still rebuilding from a catastrophic quake in 1970

Beginning of the Santa Cruz Trek
Preinca trail, growing potatoes at 4000m and 40 degree slope thousands of years pre-whitey

¿name?
Don´t know what she´s called but she sure is purty

Los niños sucios...
W/ a few too few fingers (syndromic?). ¨¡Pen, Pen! (para estudio)¨ ¨¡Comida!¨