Brij's Iron Stomach

---

We had 2 not so exciting days, hence no updates (even from SPOT). I should say that I did not have exciting days, Jeff might beg to differ. Sunday night, or possibly monday morning, he caught a stomach bug that took him out for 2 days. He worked on strengthening his stomach muscles while I exercised them in different ways. The legend of my iron stomach lives on, and if I am not trading places with Jeff by tomorrow morning, I should be good for the rest of the 5 weeks. In the last 3 days I've had, amongst other things, a fried guinea pig, a sketchy looking hen (cooked of course), a variety of sauces (not temperature hot), a drink made of maize/corn and apples, an energy bar with coca (Jeff and I are calling this the cocaine energy bar ... it´s good), pig in the vegetable marketplace and the most disgusting soup/dessert (not sure what exactly it was). But no GI distress. But, this evening I had a fresh salad (tomatoes, lettuce, carrots and onions) ... this might prove to be the deadliest of all the questionable food items listed above. If you don´t hear from me for 2-3 more days, fear the worst. 😊

Today SPOT insisted that we get some fresh air, so we biked towards the village of Macashca. There are no road signs to indicate where this village is. You just have to know the right people to get there. Jeff and I both agreed that the ride today was easily amongst the top 5 bike rides ever. This of course only applies to the uphill ride. On the way down we were chased by no less than 15 mad dogs. By now we have perfected the technique of rapidly dismounting from the bike on the non-dog side, reaching into the pocket for a rock and raising the arm, as if ready to strike. This also seems to work sans rock. We just need to figure out how to keep the heart rate from hitting 200 initially, and there has to be some way to stop the surge of adrenaline. Other than the slight inconvenience caused by this the rest of the day was perfect and we missed the 4-6pm rain in Hauraz. Did I mention that Jeff biked for an hour more than me while I took a nap on this boulder next to a shepherds shelter ... I couldn´t resist. It wouldn´t have been a perfect day without the afternoon nap!

Tomorrow we bike to Recuay. Then to Aija and onwards to Huarmey on the coast where we can catch a bus on the Pan American highway to Lima. Then to avoid a 36 hour bus ride, we will be looking for a flight to Cuzco

---