Rurrenabaque, Bolivia

Sunday, January 9, 2005:

I spent the day in an itchy, recuperative funk. After a 22-hour day on Saturday, culminating in a night out drinking at several sweltering bars and discoteques, I overslept my planned 8 AM wake-up by a solid 5 hours. I woke up (to find myself scratching my mosquito bites in my sleep), showered and went for lunch. After lunch, I contemplated hiking a mile to the "mirador" observation point above Rurre or else hauling my tired and lacerated body down to the swimming pool for a good soak. While neither of these plans was overly ambitious, I wasn´t up to them; I wound up heading back to bed --- for nearly 3 more hours. The rest of the day involved some blog catch-up and reading in various cafes (done with Wilde´s The Picture of Dorian Gray, I started Paul Theroux´s novel, Waldo). I tried to go to the TAM office to confirm that I could fly with them on Monday morning, but --- typical of TAM --- they were closed and could not be contacted. I would have to show up the next morning and hope for the best.

The only moment of remote excitement in the day came when I realized that the jar of "Tiger Balm" I had been hauling around in my pack for 3 months was a miracle drug. Good for muscle pain, it was also incredibly soothing on insect bites --- of which I had well over one hundred, despite soaking myself in OFF! every hour in the pampas. With the "active" ingredients camphor and mentol, the stuff does the trick. Its like letting your skin chain-smoke menthol cigarettes. With my body minty and numb, I spent much of the day lying comatose under the ceiling fan in my room while rodeos, football matches and "The Cable Guy" dubbed in Spanish played on the TV.