End (?) of Trip*

Things I shall not miss:

-- drinking (potable) water out of sterile urine specimen cups

-- having a toilet that does not flush .. or is flushed with buckets of dirty

water splashed in it

-- filthy bathrooms during travel/clinic times

-- enormous amounts of dust and clay; not being able to breathe, burning

eyes, sore throat

-- altitude sickness

-- the big black spider in my room

-- not being able to brush my teeth with water from

the tap

THINGS I SHALL MISS DEARLY:

-- the Peruanos

-- "Hierba Luisa" (Herbal tea with 'powers'), Lúcuma (fruit) ice cream, chirimayo (white fruit), Aguayanta marmalade, Andean potatoes

-- the medical students (huge)

-- speaking Spanish every day

-- my doc friends

-- the waterfalls, Urubama River, mountains,

mist on the mountains

*To begin with the end in mind.."

(The Ghosts of Machu Picchu)

Day 12, Sunday, 6 June

I go to breakfast and find out our Pharmacist has been up all night vomiting (and she has

heard me coughing from next door).

I bug out of the tour (it's also been raining for a few hours). The married docs, although feeling "más o menos," decide to do the tour.

I go back to the room, open the curtains, and look out to the Andes and humble dwellings

just outside my window.

So, I spend the next few hours with chills. The solicitous waiter from breakfast insisted on helping me up back to the room bearing a tray carrying a teapot, cup, and my improvised

sandwich from the breakfast buffet. So I camp out in my room.

I simply go through the photos on my digital camera and openly smile at some. ¡Qué lindas!

I eat my sandwich and watch MONK dubbed in Spanish and keep layering up in Alpaca

blankets and the hotel-supplied terry robe (this is a Western-civilization type dig).

Reinstall myself in the hotel cafe -- drink lots of hot water with honey and wait for the bus

back to Urubamba where we'll spend the last night. I'll say goodbye to my "queridos estudiantes" and dear hotel owner who truly loves us, and we'll head to Lima for tomorrow's

flight to the U.S.