South America 2007

The last night in Cuzco was one of the guys birthdays so went to a restaurant and he treated himself to the local speciality of Guinea Pig, made me want to vomit seeing it stretched out on his plate with all its teeth still in tact.

Also managed to make it to the hospital in Cuzco to have ET examined - a complete waste of time! The Peruvian health system is not quite the same as UK! Hospital was filthy and the only other patient wating was a lady with one eye.

A lady in a dirty uniform took one look and a squeeze of my finger and told me the nail would fall off and it would be fine.

I´m now in Iquitos, the amazon basin. This jungle city is amazing, although crossing the road is a death trap and its scorching hot, the local people here are really friendly and helpful. Staying in a cool little hut and one of the staff even speak English.

Today is the second day here and I love it already. When I arrived by plane (as there are no road links to Iquitos) the tuk tuk driver greated me with ´welcome to the jungle!´ The tiny ´airport´ is outside and there are no walls or ceiling, the strangest airport i´ve ever seen, basically a few bits of bamboo and a luggage conveyabelt outside, of which more dogs and wild animals came off of than bagage!

I went to the pharmacy last night to get some malaria pills and decided to show the guy my finger as he was really friendly, he basically told me what I didn´t want to hear - that its infected. I´m now taking 10 pills a day; anti- malaria for the jungle, anti-inflamatory pills for the spider bite and anti-biotics for the finger!

Went out with Previn last night (the guy I met at Airport) for a farwell drink as he is not coming into the jungle with me and will be gone by the time I come out. We got blasted with a waterballoon on our way to a club and decided to go back to the hostel as things started looking abit gangsterish in the streets at night.

Today I explored the jungle town of Iquitos to find a guide to take me into the depths of the Amazon and decided to go with a guy called Neilton 260k in to the Amazon along the river narapa. Hope i´ve made the right choice as he doesn´t speak English and the last tourist review for the trek was in 2002!

Also met a couple of street kids to accompany me around town, the little one is really sweet and has managed to find me both days so far and just holds my hand all day.

Now feeling a mixture of nerves and excitment about venturing into the jungle as leave tonight at 5pm but need to prepare myself for the massive trip across the amazon from Peru to Brazil.