Day 300 - Orpington, UK

I think either the chef, the trout or the alpaca had it's revenge on me for the mix up over the food back in Cusco as I was very ill for four days after eating it. I could barely spent a couple of hours away from the toilet as I was losing bodily fluids from both ends at an alarming rate, what made it even more worrying was that I could only just hold water down so there was a danger that I would become seriously dehydrated. I felt rotten.

However, I wasn't going to let that deter me and on arrival in Arequipa Rich and I made a beeline for a nearby tourist office to go and book our trip to The Colca Canyon. We had the choice of either a one or two day trip but because the one day trip meant getting up at 02:30 the following day we decided on the two day option.  I'm glad we did too as my tummy was decidedly unhappy that evening and I didn't get much sleep at all. Our bus came and picked us up at the hotel the next morning shortly after 08:00 and I immediately tried to catch up on sleep on our way to the Canyon. I was pretty miserable for the whole journey and slept a lot keeping my fingers crossed that the Immodium would do its job, and thankfully it did for the most part. The most frustrating thing about travelling on tourist buses is that the toilets are nearly always out of action for some reason, either this or the companies just can't be bothered to empty them. Mind you, the state I was in I don't blame them. 

At around midday we arrived at the town that we were going to stay the night and the bus took us to an expensive looking restaurant for a lunch stop. Most of the people on the tour marched straight in and ended up paying a fortune for a very mediocre lunch while Rich and I walked five minutes down the road and into the main square where we had a very reasonable meal for a handful of Peruvian Soles. I'm not sure it was a good idea to have eaten anything but thought I should try as I was starving at that point. I managed to keep it down for a few hours at least.

After lunch we were dropped off at our various hotels. We had decided to 'upgrade' ours to a more comfortable cabin style room which was still very basic so I can't imagine how primitive the standard one was. It was comfortable though and I immediately fell fast asleep on the firm bed which looked as tired as I felt. We both decided that we didn't fancy the trip to the thermal springs as we'd already done that elsewhere so it was nice just to get my head down for a couple of hours.

A bit later we were taken to a Peña where we got to see some traditional music and dancing and try some traditional food. The only traditional food I could even think about eating was a cheese and tomato pizza - i.e. the blandest thing on the menu. When it came I couldn't even face that so I survived on a glass of water that evening. The waitress kindly gave me a doggy bag though so Rich could eat the pizza for breakfast the following day. Waste not, want not...

Rich clearly got carried away by the cultural display because when one of the dancers dragged him up on the dance floor he offered very little resistance. In fact I think she was a little taken aback by his keenness to join in, particularly since the 'dance' involved taking it in turns to lie on the floor and be whipped by your partner while doing something very unusual with an orange. It was all very early Channel 4!

We were woken early the next day to drive further into the canyon to Cruce del Condor, or Condor's Cross. This is a fantastic viewpoint about 3,500m above the canyon floor where condors rise and swoop on the thermals rising from the sides of the canyon. I paid the price for the small morsel of dry bread roll that I'd attempted to eat for breakfast and as soon as the bus stopped I belted past the guide and found a conveniently placed rock behind which I could evacuate my stomach. The guide sheepishly asked me whether it was something I'd eaten, perhaps worried about the restaurant he'd taken us to the previous night and therefore concerned what might be written on his feedback form.

We got to the viewpoint and it was great to watch these massive birds gliding around in the sky, soaring around and around and hardly beating their wings at all. As the morning warmed up the air currents got stronger and carried them further and further. It was a great sight but after ten minutes of that I had to go back to the bus and sleep a bit more whilst I left the others to it. I probably would've been OK had it not been for the local women cooking up dribbly looking eggs by the side of the road and flogging them to the hungry tourists, but the smell of those made me feel extremely queasy again.

I slept for most of the six hour journey back, including during the lunch stop at yet another expensive looking restaurant.  Back in Arequipa we took a little walk around the main square and I managed to find a chemist where I could stock up on more Immodium and re-hydration powders. By this time I felt so hungry and my stomach so empty apart from perhaps a few dusty cobwebs so it was definitely time to find some simple food that I might be able to keep down. I ordered some plain boiled rice and a bowl of vegetable soup which seemed to do the trick as I held on to it for about an hour, so I must've extracted a little nutrition from it. It's very strange when you feel that ill because all you can think about is what you've eaten over the last week and I was really sensitive to any foody smells, too. It didn't help that Rich had eaten garlic bread with his meal that evening and so all I could smell was the rancid odour of garlic every time he spoke to me. It was driving me mad.

The next day I was still too rough to do anything, including eating breakfast and I had to leg it from the restaurant back to the room to dehydrate myself further. I was getting pretty cheesed off with it at this point and had visions of being checked into hospital and being plugged into a drip and all sorts. It's funny how your mind works. After staying in the room for as long as I could get away with and continuing to dose myself with antibiotics and god knows what else I was actually beginning to feel a little better. We left Arequipa that afternoon and made our way to the airport to pick up our flight to Boston (via Lima & Newark!). By the time we arrived at Newark I was actually feeling much better and I even managed to keep the in-flight meal down that they'd served us. What a great relief, it had almost disappeared as quickly as it had arrived (the illness, not the in-flight meal). While waiting for our plane to Boston from Newark the first thing I wanted to do was go and get something to eat so I sank my teeth into the juiciest and biggest burger that I'd seen in years. In fact if there had been a security camera focused on me at that point they could have used the look of wanton satisfaction on my face for an award winning advert.

We got to Boston eventually and checking into the hotel made me immediately forget all the discomfort of the last few days. The room was bright and clean, the towels fantastically white and fluffy, the soap and shower products all promised to cloak me in the sweet perfume of coconut and lime and the hot water from the shower was gushing and plentiful. Best of all, there was no bin by the side of the loo in which to deposit smelly bog roll. Oh the joys of being part of the civilised world.

We were only in Boston for a couple of days, but I loved it there. Great glass and steel buildings sit comfortably side by side with old colonial churches and wooden clad houses. The people are relaxed and the city is green, luckily we saw it as it's best as it was still spring and the brightly coloured tulips adorned most of the green spaces. As usual we did plenty of walking to get the most out of the city and we even managed to find a couple of decent bars in which to sample the local beers. Despite a very British/Irish influence to the city, they still can't quite make beer the same way we do. It looked similar but the balance is all wrong, either being too high in alcohol or hoppy flavour, or both. The food was pretty plentiful too which was apparent by the size of some of the people we saw waddling around. I couldn't help myself staring a couple of times as I couldn't see how their internal organs could support such a gargantuan size, but I kept myself in check. We walked up to Harvard University which is the oldest in North America and it was quite like walking onto a film set. What with all the old buildings and groups of students wandering around I half expected someone's backside to be poked out of one of the fraternity house's windows in true Hollywood "Animal House" style but luckily they must've been busy painting themselves blue and covering themselves with turkey feathers or whatever else it is those 'frat-brothers' get up to.

We're now home after a shortish hop across the Atlantic via Dublin and it feels wonderful. It was a great relief to walk through the front door to find nothing wrong with the house other than a few extra cobwebs and a couple of desiccated house plants. There's so much to do now though, the garden needs sorting out, the rucksacks are bursting to the seams with dirty washing and there's a lot of family and friends to catch up with. All this needs to be done in between sitting back and smiling at what an absolutely fantastic year I've had and trying to get my brain back in the right mode for job hunting. One thing's for sure though, with everything that I've seen and done over the last 300 days of travelling, things aren't going to seem the same for a very, very long time.