Huancayo

Before diving into my first day at the hospital, I have to reflect briefly on my trip to San Andres with Mario, Guillermo, Claudia and Dr. Montano (the sister of the surgeon I am working with). Talk about accomplished! She has worn more hats than that one guy in the children´s book that wore a lot of hats, including being the Minister of Health and the director of the Peruvian police. To boot, she owns one rockin´ house in a remote oasis, about 2 hours south of Lima.

We piled into her car and commenced a weekend of eating homemade pizza, steaks, chorizo and whatever else we could get our hands on, lazing around the pool, playing games and checking out the local trees and horses. Suffice it to say, it was wonderful.

After being thoroughly burned despite prodigious application of sunscreen, we left and almost immediately hopped a midnight bus to Huancayo. It was a luxury cruiser of a bus, definitely no chickens attached. I slept for most of the 7 hour ride and only woke to see the bus going further and further up, peaking at over 16,000 feet before descending into the San Mandero valley and Huancayo.

We headed to my host home which I´ll write about later to rest briefly before hitting the hospital. We were treated to a circus of an entrance, having to traverse the outside of the hospital several times before ending up where we started and meeting the hospital director. I won´t emphasize this a lot, but I could if I wanted to: the man can talk.

I´m getting kicked out of the internet cafe, so I´ll finish this later... Peace!