A very dramatic pose from David Spade

Nice picture, Viv!

The Start

Crossing over the bridge from the initial checkpoint, where they looked at our passports and trail permits, to the beginning of the trail.

In which I meet a friend, shortly after beginning the Inca Trail

"Good day, everybody. If it is a good day...Which I doubt." This fellow seemed a bit brighter than his cousin Eeyore, and was very curious about me.

Group shot

Okay, one more because Blogger is posting pictures so quickly for me tonight, for a change! Here's our merry little group, including the three lovely Irish girls we trekked with for four days.

Peru

I just got the first batch of Viv's photos and they are great! But as it's my bedtime here (got up early to continue organising myself into my new room), I'm going to just post two of her pics for the moment. Enjoy!

Just couldn't get enough of David Spade, the cheeky little devil! (reference to the Emperor's New Groove, in case you didn't get that one;)

Chillin' out in a stone tunnel in the cloud forest, somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd mountain passes.

Moving Day

I got the job!! Yup, yesterday was a great day. It was Friday first of all, Leeanne left for her flight home, and I got the job! Today I'm moving my stuff into my "new" room, which is fun, except for the disgusting mess. For someone who flipped out so often about our cleaning schedule, she could have devoted more time to her room. She always kept it neat and tidy, but it desperately needs a vacuum, especially along the sideboards, I'm having to dust out every single drawer and every single surface, and there are wrappers everywhere from her cigarette-rolling supplies, although she was not supposed to be smoking in the house!! Tomorrow our new housemate moves into my old room, a Basic Grade OT. She's mad, but absolutely lovely. We're all going to get along just fine, which I am so looking forward to! The only thing that's messing up a gorgeous Saturday is that I'm missing Jo and James' housewarming party :(

No time for blogging tonight, my Senior II interview is tomorrow!

Jungle mishaps

Looking over my photos as I put together my Snapfish album yesterday, I was reminded of two big things I left out of my earlier post about everything that went wrong with my holiday. While we were in Peru, we spent the second part of our trip in the Amazon basin. To get to our lodge in the heart of the Tambopata River Reserve, we had to take a boat trip for four hours upriver. Our flight into Puerto Maldonado landed around 1 pm, so between collecting suitcases, getting over to the river, and loading everything onto the boat, I think we started our journey somewhere around 2:30pm. By around 5pm, it was starting to get dark, and I have nice pictures of sunset on the river. Once the sun had gone over the rim, we started to lose light pretty quickly. I watched our guide go to the front of the boat, pull out a battery and a big headlamp and start to connect the lamp to the battery. It was connected by way of red and black cables with clamps at the ends, and looked like the cables you use to jump start a car. Except that only the black cable had a clamp at the end. The guide stared at it for a while, looked back at the boat driver, stared at the cables again, looked at the boat driver etc. I should say here that the boat driver was about 30 feet back with the motor, as it was a pretty long boat. The assistant manager who was riding with us finally told the guide in Spanish to strip the protective covering from the cable without the clamp, and connect it that way to the battery. He proceeded to strip the plastic covering of the cable with a machete, of all things. At this point Vivien starting nudging me, saying "This is scary!" Meaning the darkness and no lamp. And me, well, I guess Tressa has rubbed off too much on me at this point, I was loving it, I thought it was a grand adventure. All I could think of in my head was her story about patching up a bus engine with duct tape in Africa, and the fact that now I finally had an answering story. I could say, "Oh yeah? Well, one time I was on a boat motoring up a river in the Amazon basin in the dark because our lamp was broken and we had no spare!" And the lamp did not get fixed, so our guide tried to use his personal flashlight, which was about as effective as a firefly. Luckily our boat driver was very familiar with the river, and did a good job getting us to the lodge.

Early the next morning, we got up at 4:30am for an early breakfast, and enough time to get an hour upriver to the macaw clay lick, before the birds arrived. Which they never did actually, we had to go track them down in other parts of the jungle. But we got back into our trusty boat, pushed away from the dock, motored maybe 10 minutes, and the engine died. We went through an hour of the driver starting it up, getting a few revs and coughs and some forward motion, then the engine dying and quickly drifting downriver with the current. We eventually ended up downriver of the lodge, at which point the guide got out a paddle, but with several stops and starts the boat driver eventually got us back to the dock. Once we were tied up it took him about 20 minutes to fix the problem, which was something to do with an obstruction to the gas line I think. Meanwhile, I was all upset, thinking we had missed the macaws. We got to the clay lick two hours late, and ran into another small group from our lodge who said we hadn't missed anything. And as you'll see from my pics, we had great views of the macaws once we found them elsewhere, with the help of our guide's trusty machete.

And finally, we went on several long sweaty hikes with our guide, the first one being a night hike right after our arrival, where we saw a lot of big spiders, including tarantulas. But we took another hike the following afternoon, after our morning macaw adventure. We had walked for it must have been an hour, tracking signs of wild pigs that we never found, when our guide decided to turn back, via a different path. We walked for awhile, then came out onto a wide path that was apparently newly blazed, since our guide stared at it in shock and then said, "This wasn't here before." We turned down the new path, but then soon off onto another one, but hadn't gone too far before he stopped, stared ahead, and then turned around and said, "Go back. The way is closed." It sounded like something out of the Indiana Jones Crusade movie or something. We went back out to the new path, and he left us standing there while he tried out two other paths, each time coming back and announcing that it was closed. Viv and I started to joke about being lost, and I think both of us were half-thinking it might be true. Eventually, the guide just decided to follow the new path out of the jungle, and we came out into the grounds of our lodge, a site where they were building two new cabins. He then told us we were never lost, and drew a little sketch on the ground to show us why he'd had trouble-- essentially, his excuse being that unless the narrow little paths are kept clear, they grow over with new vegetation quickly, hence the "ways that were closed." A reasonable enough explanation ;)

Snapfish

I now have some 200 photos labelled on Snapfish, so let me know if you don't get the email link from me!

Pictures

As you'll probably notice, my Peru pictures are now showing up on my Flickr filmstrip in the side bar. Unfortunately, the order got all screwed up in the process of uploading them somehow, and Flickr, for some unfathomable reason, does not seem to want to allow me to rearrange them. So, although a few of them have captions, I gave up when I found out I couldn't reorder them. I've put them on Snapfish, which took more than 4 hours to upload them, and they're now in the right order, just waiting for me to add captions. I will send out a link to those as soon as I've finished. Feel free to check out my Flickr site, but the Snapfish album will be better if you're willing to wait. I hope to have that finished later on tonight. And if somehow I miss you out on my mass emailing, as I always invariably seem to leave out someone, or have my email bounced back with a failed delivery message for one reason or another, just drop me a line to let me know, and I'll get the link to you. I'm also waiting for Viv's set of pictures, because there are quite a number of them that are only on her camera, so I'll add those to my album as soon as I get them.

My short work week was okay-- orthopaedics is slow at the moment, which is not the norm, so I'm trying to enjoy it for now. My interview for Senior II is on Wednesday, and to be honest, I've already stopped thinking of myself as a Basic Grade. Even so, on Friday I was honored to be asked for advice by the other Basic Grade on the unit. It's good to be reminded that although I am still a relatively new therapist, coming up on two years in practice, I also do know quite a bit, and have a good head for clinical reasoning. Hopefully, I'll change over to the Senior II paystub for next month's payday ;)

I've now been invited to the full day for Laura's upcoming wedding. Initially, I was invited for the reception only, but she told me I've become a really good friend, and wants me there for all of it. It was really nice to hear from her and Angelica upon my return that they had missed me. It's heartwarming to know that the people you care about feel the same about you. Action is most important, but every once in awhile, the words are nice too. I had them at home from Jenn and from my parents as well. I feel torn between the two worlds, but this seems to be the right place for me right now. Thursday night, I went out with Laura and Angelica and two others for some impromptu drinks after work. It was beautiful, sunny and warm, and we wanted to be out in the garden of a pub. Drinks turned into dinner, and before we knew it, it was after 10pm. As they say, time flies...

Still down for the count

Not much to update on, since my bad luck seems to have followed me home. I did go into work yesterday morning, and about an hour later, basically got sick in front of my new supervisor. So I was sent home, again. It was truly embarrassing, and I just hope I'm not replaying that moment in my head when I interview next week, since this new supervisor is on the interviewing panel. I was told this morning I couldn't come in today either, since I have to be "clear" for a full 24 hours before returning. Hopefully tomorrow. At least she knows firsthand I wasn't trying to extend my holiday with faked sick days.

I have not been up to getting my pictures online as I've been battling a pounding headache, so I will try to get to that by this weekend at the latest.

Most of you probably already know from emails that have been bouncing around, but Tressa took on her first "real" job as of Monday I believe. They gave her an assignment in the DRC as she calls it, which is the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I asked her when I could come to see the gorillas, and she told me I can't because there are currently two kinds and they're both in the mountains (gorillas and guerillas). Figures.

summer, summer, summertime

Well, I'm back. And it felt like I stepped off the plane into summer. It must have been like 20 degrees Celsius here today! And apparently it's been like this since Easter. A far cry from the snowstorms and Nor'easters I was experiencing in the US! I did make it to work before noon, but they basically sent me home, so I've been forced to use another annual leave day. Oh well, I'll take unpaid leave if I need to at some point. I had a nice long nap, and then have been trying various tricks to stay awake, but I think it's time to go back to bed at this point. I have uploaded my pics to my computer, but have yet to organise and everything-- will let you all know when they're ready. Sweet dreams all.

Entertaining myself at JFK

Well, here I am sitting at JFK, in the middle of afore-mentioned Nor'Easter, with high winds and driving rain. And I know that firsthand, because the stupid AirTrain does not connect the terminal where I landed (4) with the terminal where I needed to be for my UK flight (3). It runs direct from terminal 4 to terminal 2. So I had to walk a half mile in the driving rain and high winds, which had me at a dead stop, and actually pushed me backwards twice with a heavy suitcase in tow. However, I made it, waited two hours to check in (I couldn't use the e-check-in kiosk because of all the trouble in London at the start of this trip when my original reservation was cancelled), am now warm and dry, and have had some lunch. And perhaps most amazingly of all, at the moment, they say that my flight is still scheduled to go on time. The stewardess on my last flight explained to me, after we had landed and the nausea had passed enough for both of us to speak again (rough turbulence during the descent and landing process), that it is easier for flights to take off than to land in this awful weather, and in particular because mine is an international flight, it's less likely to be cancelled. Hope I didn't just jinx it.

Anyway, I think I only gave half the story yesterday. It makes my heart ache, the physical difficulties that my grandfather is experiencing. However, he is 93, and he proudly told me he is currently the oldest one at his assisted living facility. Though it took him 10 minutes to get from the door of Applebees to our table 75 feet away with his chariot as he calls it (a rolling walker with seat built in), he takes it all in stride, with dignity and without complaint. He also has hearing and vision problems. However, he still has a mind like a steel trap. We got to see my Uncle Dutch and Aunt Becky last night only for dinner, and he told them all about how I'd been to "Mitchu Pitchu, Machu Patchu, Moochu Poochu....and I hope they have someone to clean it up!"

7Wonders

Vote for the new Seven Wonders...of course, I'm biased, and I think y'all should choose Machu Picchu as one of your choices, but hey, it's up to you. Just not the Eiffel Tower or Statue of Liberty please, I mean, come on!

Hola from Lima, Peru!

Yes, I am still here and it is a very long story. This trip has been operating through a bad luck fog from the very beginning...I will write more when I am home tomorrow (finalmente!), but here´s the summary of the stuff that has gone wrong. I missed my initial flight from London to New York, due to a public transportation nightmare in London. So I had to go back home, and get up at 4am the next morning to go back out to Gatwick. When I arrived at Gatwick the next morning, they said even though I had spoken with one of their colleagues the night before and received a standby ticket for that morning, because I had missed my original flight, my whole reservation had been cancelled, so I no longer had a return flight. !!!! We got that sorted out though, and I did get to New York in time to join my parents for the Broadway show my mum had booked weeks earlier. When we got home after the show I´d essentially been awake for 36 hours, but only had 6 hours to sleep before I got up to get ready for my drive to Boston. Nicole and Rob had a beautiful wedding, great weather, and I had a blast at the reception. Plus, I got an invitation back out to the Cotswolds to Rob´s parents´beautiful home ;) After partying till the wee hours, I had two hours of sleep, got up, grabbed a Red Bull, and started the drive to Vivien´s house, as we were going to the airport together. I was within 10 minutes of her house when I got a flat tire. Because it was April 1, she thought I was playing an April Fools´Joke on her, and as I burned through 15 pounds of UK credit on my UK mobile in three minutes, I had to yell at her a bit to get her to take me seriously and come pick me up. Luckily, a cop was passing, told me I could leave the car there until my parents could pick it up, and Viv and I made it to the airport on time for our flight. I called my parents laughing hysterically, this being typical of traveling with Vivien, and arranged for them to retrieve the car once they returned from the Poconos with the Heilalas. We made it to Peru without incident, although sleeping overnight in the Lima airport was an experience...I´ll save that for another blog. We arrived at the hotel in Cusco where they asked me for my passport and immigration document, which I realised I had lost (the immigration document, not the passport). Apparently that is going to cost me some money later on tonight when we finally get on our flight back to Newark. The following morning, we got up at 5am to catch our ride out to the trailhead for the Caminos Inka (Inca Trail), and we had a small rest stop at a little town where I tried to put in my contacts. The left one was ripped almost completely in half, and I had no spares...the spares were in the backpack I decided to leave behind after I missed my initial flight in London! So I hiked the Inka Trail in my glasses,grrr. I also burned the hell out of the tops of both hands on the third day-- the rest of my body was covered up, and I forgot about my hands. They turned a deep red purple and became puffy. It's pretty terrifying to make a mistake like that with my family's medical history, but it's not like I can roll back time and remember the sun block. To skip ahead to the end of our trip, we spent the last three days of our holiday in the Amazon basin, about 4 hours upriver on the Tambopata from Puerto Maldonado. We had a flight from PM to Lima, via Cusco. Our flight was delayed, but we eventually got to Cusco. They had us wait on the plane for 45 minutes, then told us that due to mechanical problems, the flight was now cancelled. We got off the plane, and after much negotiating on Viv´s part, they rebooked us for the following day through Miami to land in Newark at about 11pm tonight. They gave us a very nice hotel and food and transport and telephone cards. This morning, we were booked on an 8am flight to Lima. We got to the airport, and they gave us boarding passes for the 7:40am flight. Long story short, that flight was delayed due to "adverse weather conditions" though the sky looked fine to me, until 10:40 am which was when the flight to Miami was scheduled to leave. Had we been given boarding passes for the 8am flight which we should have had, we would have made the flight, as that flight did take off at 9:15am. So we got to Lima eventually, went to the LAN desk, where they tried to tell us they were going to send us overnight to Miami, and Miami to Newark. I said no way, you're going to rebook us on the same direct flight from Lima to Newark that we were supposed to be on last night. They tried to tell me it wasn't showing up on their screen and there was no such flight, but I knew they were trying to pull a fast one because they aren't partners with Continental and didn't want to pay to rebook us. I told him he had better look up the flight, and sure enough, it was there. They then sent us to the Sheraton where we had a room for the day, gave us taxis, and really sumptuous lunch and dinner buffets, and here I am on the computer, checking email for the first time in two weeks.
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Ok, I was kicked off the computer at that point on April 10, as my "free" internet time was apparently done. It's now April 14 and I'm in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan at the Hampton Inn, which I must admit I'm pretty impressed with...however, on the way here, we had a connecting flight through Detroit, where-- you can probaby guess-- our flight up north here was cancelled. Yup. We went to a hotel overnight, and got on a flight at 6am the following morning. It's been good to see the new assisted living facility where my grandfather is now living, and he is taking us all out to Applebee's tonight (the fancy place for dinner in town, lol) because they have "everything you could possibly want, you can have whatever you want." I showed him my pictures from Peru, and gave him a hat made of alpaca wool, and he continues to tell people that his granddaughter went to Machu Poochu. We've played hearts and reminisced, and Grandpa has given me my grandmother's wedding and engagement rings, which I now wear around my neck. He says that has always been the tradition in this family.

Tomorrow I catch flights from here to Detroit, Detroit to JFK, and JFK to the UK. That's assuming the Nor'easter bearing down on the East Coast doesn't throw a kink into those plans. Considering how my holiday has gone thus far, I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up at home on Sunday night, and taking off Monday instead. Not exactly the good impression I want to make on my boss, considering I have an interview for Senior II coming up on April 25. Sigh. Oh well, what will be, will be.