So I headed off to the rainforest. I took a Malarone, my anti-malaria tablet, with breakfast. May cause dizziness. I feel a little dizzy, but it's probably psychosimatic I tell myself. Ok.
I get to Quito and transfer buses. Two hours later I get off at Papallacta, a tiny hot springs town nestled in foggy mountains, on the way to the rainforest. My plan is to stop here and spend the night, then continue on to Lago Agrio from there, spend the night, and meet up for the tour in the morning. I get fresh trout- the local specialty- at the hostel resteraunt, and head to the springs. I book a massage at the spa for later, then head to the springs. These are thermal springs, a really nice complex of them, at lots of different depths and temperatures, and cold pools to cool you down. I am delighted, lounging in the most consistently temperatured water I have experienced in Ecuador. Glorious.
The massage was very nice, very relaxing. But I never like massages as much as I think I will. Except for once when I recieved a tandem massage at Kripalu from two massage students. One of the top ten experiences ever.
After the massage I decided to keep pampering myself on my little vacation and eat out at the fancy hotel resteraunts that takes credit card, as did the massage place. I'm tight on cash, but where I can pay with credit card I'm golden, especially as I start work almost as soon as I get back to the states. I order trout carpaccio, a moccachino, fillet mingon, and fried ice cream in an orange glaze and another moccachino for dessert. Glorious.
And then around dessert time I begin to feel extremely ill. Very dizzy, queasy, having trouble focusing. I go back to my hotel, where I pass one of the worst nights of my life. Not only am I sick, I'm scared, because it's a very heady illness. It feels like it's messing with my consciousness, not my body. And I'm alone in the middle of nowhere. And in Ecuador the middle of nowhere means the roads are made of dirt and the hostel's phone is broken. I keep trying to read to calm myself down, and end up throwing up which helps a little. I finally get to sleep really late.
In the morning, I decide to take a shower and find a phone. I need to call someone and have them help me figure out if I should tough this out or if I should reschedule the rainforest. I'm already about 4 hours out, out of 10. But I still feel like shit.
Ok, so shower time before I leave the hostel. I turn on the hot water knob. No water comes out. I put my clothes back on and find the management. Excuse me, the hot water isn't working. No, he says, you have to wait. I say to him, there are two knobs, right? And the one on the left is hot, right? Yes... Well, when I turn the knob on the right, no water falls. Let's take a look he says, but what he is really saying is, Oh my god the stupid gringa can't even make the shower work. Like when you take your computer to the computer store because you can't get it to turn on and the apple genius pushes the on button and your computer boots up. Well, this guy runs the cold water in my room for about 10 minutes. Finally I ask him if I can shower in an empty room. That's what I do. Then I leave the hostel, and go to a phone place. I call my mother's cell phone, because I don't know her home phone number. No answer. I call my dad's work number. No. His cell. No. His house. No. I call Alley's cell. No. I have only two more numbers memorized, thanks to cell phone phonebooks. This is getting desperate. I call Alley's house phone. She picks up and tells me to go back to the farm. I go back. I'll try again next week.
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