I hope the wind changes..
11:50 pm Sunday, 19 October, 2008
Good evening. It’s just past 10pm and I’m sat on the roof terrace of my hotel in Pisco which is about 3 1/2 hours South of Lima in Peru. Today is my 29th birthday although as I understand the timing of my birth it was in the early hours and thus it was still the 18th of October in South America when I was born.
We have just had our first full group dinner complete with a particularly nice birthday cake. The tour group is interesting. It’s by no means what I expected and we range from age 10 to age 65. The ten year old seems fine but I’m somewhat unimpressed with this being an 18+ tour. It’s caused a little bit of friction already with topics and language being an interesting area.
I am delighted to report that out of Lima the air quality takes a significant improvement and it’s quite nice to be sitting out here. I do need to get some clothes washed but I’ll get that done along the way.
I’m sat up here and I’m looking out over the light up city and I’m listening to Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago. I’m still quite hungover from last night. It somehow turned into a little bit of a session and the finish was around 2am I guess. Then a long bus ride today and no breakfast or lunch cannot have helped with my headache. Dinner was lovely and a good nights sleep will make all the difference.
I have found a couple of times recently that I’m weary of travel. I don’t generally feel like I am but if I’m hungover (like today) or something else isn’t quite right that it can push me into that weariness of pretty constantly moving. I spent 4 nights in Lima which was nice. The first three I had the room to myself which let me faff around a bit more and empty bits of my bag and that. I am starting to find that I’m a bit tired and I’d really like to have a room to myself for a week or so just to let me open everything and not worry about leaving things around and to sit and to watch a movie or 10 and to just *breathe*. However that’s just the hangover talking, I am tired but at the same time as I say today is my 29th birthday and I’m spending it in the middle of Peru. Not exactly something that had crossed my mind.
Also last year on my 28th birthday after dinner out my plans somewhat changed when I had to rescue my drunken sister sometime around midnight I guess it was (”Get in a taxi, I’ll pay on arrival”). It wasn’t so bad and it did gave me a good laugh as she insisted (and possibly still does, sorry Md!) that she wasn’t drunk but promptly fell over as soon as she got in the door. Some difference this year huh?
Tomorrow we have an early start and then we head off to the Ballestas Islands (the poor man’s Galapagos Islands) and then onto Nazca and some awesome stuff. Inca Trail is later in the week and I’m nervous, we are being pounded about altitude sickness a lot but I keep telling myself that it doesn’t matter how hard it is because there will be that moment on arrival when everything is forgotten and the sight is breathtaking. Also after that fucking mountain in China, I can climb anything!!
So yeah a bit all over the place. I do need some sleep, 12 hours will be nice. If I’m lucky I’ll get eight but I suspect it’ll be closer to six. The one comment I will make on the tour so far is that I could (again so far) have done what I’ve seen of South America on my own but it would have been hard work and it’s not about hard work at the moment.
Thanks to all for various birthday wishes and to de Campi who came up with the genius idea to simply fedex me a new power supply but as I said earlier, I’m sorted for now. Thank fuck.
22.40 Pisco, Peru. Sunday October 19th.