Three weeks in Lima and other news from March

In March we stayed 3 weeks in Lima – the capital of Peru. The main reason – Katja’s symptoms of unknown disease. First coughing, then spasms on the right and the left side… All started in Iquitos, right after I got cured malaria and finished with Dengue. We thought that postherpetic neuralgia got activated. Started to search for biomagnetism specialists. Unfortunately the only 3 such doctors in Peru are in Lima and all of them ask for impossible to pay fees – each session 150-170 soles (40 EUR). Besides that, one of them claims he serves people from different social levels, so we wonder how poorest people from the town earning maybe hundred dollars a month could afford 40 EUR session? Talking to these doctors personally got us an impression that the main aim of them is MONEY rather than honestly helping people. Finally, we decided to go for biomagnetism in Chile, and here in Iquique (where we are staying last few days) Katja finally went to the biomagnetism specialist and of course started to feel much better.

In the end of March I received POSITIVE results of Leptospirosis analysis which was initiated in the end of February (diagnosis of this disease lasts 3-4 weeks). This disease is serious, so it is important try to prevent its damage to the body by taking doxyciclina (antibiotics). This is what I was doing for 10 days. Since Katja’s symptoms were not decreasing, we suspected that she had some kind of tropical infection (don’t forget we have spent 2 months in Peru jungles). Following this thought in Lima we visited an experienced doctor of tropical diseases and for our surprise he diagnosed only bronchitis, nothing more. He prescribed 7 days antibiotics (claritromicina). This time Katja accepted treatment of conventional medicine, as we could not think of anything natural. After 5 days taking this antibiotics, Katja’s body started to react to the chemicals (rapid heart beating, spasms) and she decided to stop taking these pills.

Carla flying

Lima is an enormous city with 9 millions inhabitants. We lived in Comas district – the Northern part of Lima. This is were we spent most of the days, as traveling to the city center is too time-consuming. One way trip is normally up to 1.5 hours, depending on the traffic jams and the route of the bus. No, we were not in favour to spend 3 hours a day only in the buses. In Comas we were hosted by Carla – hitch-hiker, actress and simply an interesting personality.

Here is a short list of the most remarkable events during our stay in Lima.

Earthquakes

Night from 28 to 29 of March I woke up in the middle of the night. I rose from the bed. Felt like the bed is shaking. Last vibrations I felt immediately after I woke up. Understood that it is an earthquake!
“Katja!” I shouted. She, of course, woke up and looked at me if she would be asking “what is happening?” I got confused. At that moment any signs of earthquake disappeared. It was silly to say that the earth is shaking when it was not shaking. In other words, I was confused, maybe all this was just an illusion? “Don’t worry, everything is fine… Sleep sleep…” I told her and we continue sleeping.

Morning. Katja is already enjoying new day, me still in bed. Suddenly the windows make a cracky sounds, then follow the walls… Now for sure EVERYTHING is shaking! An EARTHQUAKE!!! We both realize that and ran outside of the room.
“My documents!”, Katja came back to the room and grabbed her neck pouch with the passport.
“My trousers!”, I realised that it would be better to put my trousers before I expose myself on the street. PASSPORT! was another thought. During the stress I could not clearly remember in which part of the backpack I have my neck pouch. To make it sure I have it, I grabbed the whole backpack. When I reached the door I finally got an idea that my documents are on the top pocket of the bag. When we managed to get out of the house to the street, the earthquake was already gone.

Next day newspapers announced that the first earthquake at 1:30am had 4.3 and in the morning 8:00am – 5.3 points by the Richter scale. It is of course far away from the disaster in Peru last August – earthquake that reached 8.0 points by Richter.

Best traveler of Lithuania

In March I was announced as the best traveler of Lithuania in 2007. This contest for travelers called “Magelan of Lithuania” was organized for the second time by InfoEra which is an official distributor of Magelan GPSs in Lithuania.

Short short short

When in the end of February I was attacked by Dengue and malaria at the same time and got high fever, my long hair started to irritate me. The only thing I wanted at that time – to say good-bye to my long tail of the hair.

My short-hair “illness” was transferred to Katja. She got dreams of having short hair as well, in this way avoiding every morning care of the hair – mainly brushing them. She started to realize her dream by searching Internet for the haircut she would like to have. She wanted this one:

When my tropical diseases were cured and high fever was gone, I almost forgot the annoyance of long hair. However, the word “barbershop” anyway sounded as sweet and attractive as, for example, “bakery”.

Katja was the pioneer of all this fuzz. She was the first taking final actions. In Comas area of Lima one could find lots of barbershops for 5 soles ($1.85), but she did not trust them. She was sure they have a single cut and have not much experience in doing special orders. Katja wanted a bit of quality and decided to pay 20 soles ($7.40) in a more luxury barbershop. Most

important – she was happy about the result.

I could not wait longer. In a random barbershop for 5 soles I showed my 3 years old passport picture and said “want to be like this!” Result was satisfying.

Nonsense of capitalism

For healing Katja’s bronchitis doctor in Lima prescribed the following medicine:

In the pharmacy of the clinic we asked how much is this medicine. The cashier made few clicks in the computer…
“10 soles [$3.7],” she replied.
Impossible price, we thought.
“It is for 10 pills or what?”
“No, one unit.”
We could not believe it.
“Wait wait, don’t you have anything cheaper? Something from the other company?”
“Wait a minute… Yes, we have. 13 soles for the package of 10 pills.”

Pure nonsense of MONEY oriented capitalism, we cannot find another explanation to this.

PS: These kind of cheap “non-commercial” medicine in Peru is called “generic”. Our Peruvian friend Carla said she has heard that the government is going to forbid sale of generic medicine. Would be a real disaster for such a poor country like Peru.

The Big Search

We
are not googles, so what we search – takes time. We mean job possibilities. Last month we have send more than 100 emails to the hostels in Bolivia, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile asking for any kind of paid job. Our aim is to save a bit more money in order be able to continue our life journey.

By now we only got one request to make a website for a travel agency in San Pedro de Atacama – the city in the desert of Chile. Besides that we will continue writing for Lithuanian media and will wait until the former German teacher will correct Katja’s 500 pages book about the first part of our trip (January 2006 – April 2007). Once this is done, we will search for a publisher in Germany.