Hello Peru! Lying low in Lima

---

Burger King, McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut. To describe Miraflores as the tourist area of Lima is an understatement. The flight went well and we made it safe and sound to Miraflores, Lima. We managed to share an extortionately expensive executivo taxi from the Airport with two English backpackers and as we arrived at our pre-booked bunkbeds in the Loki Hostel in Lima, out of the window was a blanket banner advertising McFlurries. We could have been in any major city. Loki Hostels are part of a growing chain of irish-ish hostels in Peru. Just after we booked in we were told that breakfast was still being served upstairs. To our delight there was a Full Irish Breakfast on the menu. Okay, the sausages were a bit pink and the bacon was in tiny strips, but it was something from home, and it was delicious!

Fed and watered we set about appeasing the parents and spent about 3 hours writing and uploading the last two blogs. Satisfied that we were practically up-to-date we retired to the dorm, planning a gentle afternoon siesta before dinner. We woke up at 9am the following day in a room full of strangers. Some siesta that turned out to be! But it was an omen of days to come. We felt lethargic all day Saturday but, rather optimistically, wrote it off as jet lag.

We coaxed ourselves out of bed and walked around the square in Miraflores. On impulse we hopped in a taxi to Praca das Armas, the main plaza in the historical district of Lima. With no real agenda we wandered fairly aimlessly around town admiring the beautiful buildings. We found our way to the church that all the guide books talked about - the Iglesia de San Francisco. We paid out 5 soles each and managed to tag on to an English guided tour that was just leaving. The tour was my kind of tour. She had 40 minutes to cover the whole church, so she only hit on the major points, but it was enough to keep you interested until the next room. Admiring the paintings and the ornate furniture, we walked through the cloisters, the choir hall, the sacristy and eventually made our way down into the catacombs. This was the most rewarding part of the tour as she explained the various excavations that had been done over the last two decades. You get the impression that there is a lot more they could do, but that the money ran out. That said we were walking over ground that held over 25,000 bodies. This fact, coupled with the claustrophobic tunnels made for a very eery setting. And then she showed us the bones. Rows upon rows of tibulas and fibulas all lined up. Then the skulls in the ossory. It was freaky but compelling. You didn't want to run, because the history was fascinating and it is essentially just a graveyard. They still bury the current Franciscan Monks down there! Suffice to say that when we emerged back into the sunlight 40minutes later we were slightly stunned. We found our way to the central market place and had a really cheap but very tasty chinese meal in a nearby restaurant. We hadn't a clue what dishes would turn up because we don't know what half of the dishes are in English and the menu was only in Spanish!

That afternoon we put our heads together and planned a jungle trip 3 days away. About 30minutes after we had handed over an enormous wad of cash to our tour operator, the first sneeze arrived. About three hours later there was a slight cough.

I think it was because we were in such an Irish environment and because it was a Saturday night, but our logic became 'we must drink lots of alcohol to kill the bug'. Needless to say we already had one or two in us by the time this little gem of a solution emerged! Hammered drunk, with a flourish we wished our new found besht-friends in the bar goodnight and retired to the dorm around 2am. On Sunday morning we did not make a pretty pair. After dragging our sorry asses upstairs for a fantastically greasy breakfast we agreed that the best and fairest course of action would be to go back to bed. Around 4 that afternoon we had to pick up our tickets from the tour operator. Still tired, after enough sleep to banish any normal hangover, we decided that we had probably caught something.

The problem with travelling through many airports is that you have to fill in far to many swine flu forms and you see way too many people with masks on. These facts were niggling away at us as we relieved the pharmacy of their stock of Berocca and Vitamin C and paracetamol and anything else that might make the feeling go away. Drugs are great, and coupled with a lot of sleep on Monday we really thought we had it beat. With the benefit of hindsight I know now that we were fooling ourselves. We had committed to a 5 day tour in the middle of the jungle and had spent a fair penny on it. We were determined to go and both kept the act up until 5am on Tuesday morning, when we were about to queue to take a flight out of Lima into the back and beyond. A place with no hot water and probably no doctor...you can guess what we were thinking.

Philippe hadn´t slept most of the previous night for worrying about the being in the middle of nowhere-ness of it all. He looked a lot worse than me that morning. The main symptom you hear about swine flu is a high fever. We both popped our thermometer lolly-pops in and scored 36.8 and 37.1 respectively. We took our boarding passes.

When Philippe woke from his slumber mid-flight to Puerto Maldonado he felt quite clammy to touch. He also said he felt like crap and wanted to see a doctor when we landed. Although I was feeling better than the previous day, looking at him, I was in no mood to object. When we arrived in Puerto Maldonado we handed ourselves in to the kind man who spoke no English but was wearing a face mask under the big "Do you have swine flu?" sign. Better safe than sorry eh?

---