It's Peru, Baby.

Was awoken early to the sound of reverberating thuds outside the front door. I opened the door for a look, and saw a mallet-wielding youth whose job it is to break up the 250 metres of concrete pavement along our road today (better him than me). The city has decided to re-do all the pavements in this area, as Chiclayo will have an influx of tourists in July, when there will be a South American football tournament at the stadium nearby. It seems to me, pavements are some of the least urgent reparations necessary, considering the state of the traffic lights... and that the road itself it is not actually paved. When I mentioned this, everyone looked at me oddly, and informed me that we are in Peru. Right then! Looks like we won’t be using the car for awhile, seeing as the pavement will be impassable.

Forget the cup of sugar. Yesterday evening at 10pm the neighbour into whose ear Perla projected her breastmilk came round with another request. Could she borrow a male duck? She’d heard that we have one. “Erm... sure,” said Perla, “but now?”. The neighbour agreed that perhaps her female duck could wait until the morning to enjoy the stud duck. I’m not sure if I should be concerned, as Perla reckons she’ll be after Tito next!

It is a triumphant day. Today I celebrated the happy occurance of my first solid poop in Peru. Yep, that’s right, I have had constant, unrelenting diarrhoea since Day One. At first I thought I just needed to give my body time to get accustomed to Peru’s own special brands of bacteria, but it quickly became clear that heavy duty drugs were needed. Sudden and painful explosions from my prosterior were not enhancing my exploration experiences of Peru, especially considering many toilets have no seat, toilet paper, or flush mechanism. So, after three visits to the doctor, and five different types of medicine, I was finally prescribed an anti-parasitical pill, which seems to have done the trick. I have also had to completely eliminate dairy, mangos, and uncooked seafood from my diet (the latter surprisingly difficult, as Peru’s national dish is cebiche, raw seafood in lemon juice, with hot peppers and onions - scrumptious). My intestines now seem to have finally recovered, and I have been advised that I can slowly introduce cebiche back into my diet. Brilliant!

Have just returned from two nights camping at the beach. It was as fun as you might expect camping with ten people with whom you can only communicate with through using gestures, and basic key words from several different languages, to be. Challenging, but much improved with lashings of rum. Camping in Peru is different to other experiences of camping I have had (mostly in North America). Firstly, it did not involve tents. Secondly, it did not involve hot dogs. And, lastly, it did not involve any trees whatsoever. The location was in the middle of nowhere, an hours’ drive along the beach from the nearest town. Behind the beach is a vast desert, so there was absolutely no shortage of available sand. In fact, other than sea, there is nothing but sand as far as the eye can see, in every direction (except up, obviously). The blokes who organised the excursion took provisions of three very fresh chickens, feathers and all, plus veg and rice. This is what we ate, three times a day, except for the first morning, when we had tinned sardines. It was always cooked to perfection and absolutely delicious, but being next to the ocean we naturally had hoped to eat fresh fish. It was not to be. The menfolk spent all of the second day hooking up an elaborate and extremely long fishing line get-up, which was to be taken far out to sea by sea-doo. They would then drop the attached rock, and leave the line out for a hour or so before pulling it in and figuritively feasting on multitudinous fruits of the sea. Unfortunately, they failed to test run the sea-doo, and it proved impossible to penetrate the breakers. Thus giving further evidence to a theory I have been working on for some time: men are stupid.