En Route

After a hectic summer, I found myself looking outside an airplane window once again. I still can’t believe I got this awesome opportunity to work with CARE International in the Peruvian Andes.

After a seven hour flight into Lima, staying awake for another eight hours to catch my morning flight into the Andes was challenging and entailed sporadic napping in painfully uncomfortable positions. I did get to talk to a really sweet elderly man who apparently found my heavily accented Spanish endearing. He also agreed that it was rather ridiculous that my nail file, of all things, was confiscated at US customs.

At six am, I boarded a puddle-jumper for Ayacucho. Well, actually, we first made an unexpected stop in Angahuayles to pick up a half dead man in desperate need of emergency medical attention (apparently the back seats of smaller airplanes completely recline to accommodate IV drips and other equipment). Flying over the Andes reminded me of the movie “Alive”; yes, it’s the one where a plane full of people crash in the mountains and end up eating dead passengers to survive. To say the least, it felt good to safely land in Ayacucho, which is 9000 feet above sea level.

Somnambulating towards the luggage carousel, I found my bag (just one; not bad, eh?) and the van sent to pick-up new CARE relief workers. Things at the CARE house were hectic since two people of the staff were airlifted to Lima yesterday for urgently needed stomach operations (I know at least one was appendicitis). Hmm, well, I’m not too worried since I’m sure antibodies for every imaginable disease are floating somewhere in my body considering my last doctor’s visit (before South Africa) entailed a nurse jabbing me twenty consecutive times to prevent diseases whose names I can’t even pronounce let alone spell.

Bueno, hasta mañana. Besos y abrazos.


DISCLAIMER: I cannot figure out where any of the punctuation marks are on this keyboard and the lights in this internet cafe vary between dim and flickering. Also my English gets worse as my Spanish improves (classic inverse relationship) and there's no spell check so sorry for all typos . . .!

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