Having a blast, as it were

"I hope you are having a blast," one of my friends wrote me recently about this bicycle trip. 

He had no idea what sort of blast we are having indeed.

We've taken two rest days due to suffering from another sort of blast, involving the colon jurisdiction. We're kind of like the blind leading the blind here, as Elise's body is experiencing the unfortunate expected side effects of Flagyl, and my body decided the banyo was an excellent place to frequent.

But God bless air conditioned hotel rooms, drugs, and laughter, however.

With our hotel WiFi I did some googling about tropical diarrhea and emailed a certain very knowledgeable tropically-travelled friend (thank you Big Ben!!!), who replied with helpful and reassuring advice. If I am hosting some mini-beast guests of the bacteria persuasion, which is more likely than ameobas, the best course of action is to evict them with a little help of the broad-spectrum Cipro (over the counter for less than $3!). Thankfully the output has already diminished, and I've been eating and drinking. I've eaten more humble white bread (pan, and there's plenty of panaderias) in the past two days than I have in weeks. Oh, simple digestion.

I have total trust that I will soon be back to well again. This trust is a wonderful thing, so we wait this out, laughing at ourselves actually.

That sort of laughter where you put your head in your hand and sort of crumple with the ridiculous and pathetic hilarity of it. It astounds me how Elise and I can laugh so hard about this, flopped on our respective beds, resting in each other's eyes in the understanding of ourselves, and just rolling around, poking fun at our conditions rather than spiralling into a sink of despair.

We have been resting in an air conditioned (a necessity, as it bakes around 104 around here) hotel room for two days, in the town of Plato. I imagined I might feel boredom or resentment at my condition, but I have totally mellowed out about it, sleeping the involuntary sleep of a body fighting for itself, feeling totally relaxed, and tapping out entries.

So the air conditioning and WiFi are a wonderful treat, but a functional toilet would also be nice. Ours kind of doesnt want to flush sometimes. When we first arrived we were wishing for a bucket, which is a classic way to flush here, but there was none. So, in absence of any sort of container at all, I pulled the top drawer from the little janky side table, filled it with water, and dribblyingly poured it in.

Me, standing in the banyo doorway, holding a damp drawer and looking both victorious and bemused: "Well, some of it went somewhere."

Gloriously, the plumbing soon cooperated, and I enjoyed flushing and washing my hands with running water (instead of out of the back of the toilet) with more relish than I ever thought possible.

We also found ourselves laughing at ourselves at the end of breakfast today. We had managed to ease our way out and successfully consume some benign eggs and rice.

Sitting there at the table, the plates cleared away,
Sandra: "Time to go recover from breakfast."
Elise: "Just as soon as I can get up."

This all comes as part of the experience of tropical travel. Its amazing to me that I've traveled in so many tropical places and am only now inducted into this world. But here we are, and I'll soon be fine.

Pan Fan, or: Bread From Heaven, or: How to Keep Ants Out of Your Food.

Still life of tropical gastric complaints. Staying successfully hydrated. Where's the drawer though?

Elise brought me some popcorn as a gift. Amazingly it matched my outfit.

We had our hands on the doorknob on the way to breakfast, checked our room before leaving, and were like, "wait, we HAVE to document how different our two beds are." The Leo (left) and the Virgo (right)

Even the Colombians are complaining about the heat here.

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