MPC Chapter 8 - Our Last Hoorah

We walked down the streets of Aguas Calientes littered with hundreds of resturants all beckoning us inside with the promise of cheap beer and free snacks. Al and I just stepped to the side and let all the rest of the group hash out deals with various resturantours until they settled on the resturant with the cheapest beer that also offered some free nachos to entice us further and we sat down. Honestly, hiking to the extremes that we did over these past 4 days worked up such large appetites that we ordered 5 large pizzas to share.
I should note, however, that a large pizza in Peru might be considered a medium (at a stretch) in America and Great Britian so 5 was really not that big of a deal and the free nachos were more like a tiny baby plate of thin wafery corn chips with a miniscule bit of mashed avocado in the middle and not the mound of tortilla chips piled high with beans, guacamole, cheese, salsa, beef etc...that comes with Texas style nachos. And then there was the beer...the yummy Peruvian beer that went down a right treat. We must have drank about 10 litres of the stuff. We sat around devouring our feast and reminicing about the stories during the hike and sharing our pictures and trying to soak up our last remaining hours together before we all went our separate ways...it was 2 hours of happiness spent with a great group of people.
Now, when I am in the moment all else kind of just slips away. All the aches and pains associated with the 4 day extreme hiking adventure we just had, but most of all the stomach ailments fade into the backgroud of music and giggles and good friends. Unfortunately, these types of issues rarely stay hidden for long...and when it was time to go and we were entering the train for the first of the 4 hour journey back to the hostel, I was reminded of just how ill I really was.
I cannot explain in words how challenging it is to control diarrhea on a 2 hour train ride so I will focus on the funnier moments of this ride. Tom, Al and I were all sitting together and the rest of us were split up and dotted around the train. Tom brought another 1 litre bottle of beer on the train so we could all share it and for some reason kept knocking it over time and time again. There was a local Peruvian young man sitting in the 4th chair and luckily he had fallen asleep, as Tom continunally spilled the beer all over this poor guy...he seemed totally unaware that his jeans were covered with beer so we just carried on. At one point, the train came to a stop and dozens of poor starving children raced up to the window begging for food. There was some Spanish announcement on in the background, but they speak so fast that sometimes I cannot translate that well. We decided to through our train snack (a bag of nuts and some crackers) out of the window to the children below. Just as we had done this, the announcement was them repeated in English. "Please do not throw anything from the train to the children below. It is dangerous and we want to discourage this type of behaviour for their safety." Whoops. All the Spanish soeaking passengers were laughing at us and we shrank down into our seats and tried to look inconspicuous.
Luckily, the train moved on and we reached our destination a few short moments later. When we disembarked from the train, we were bombarded with dozens of people holding signs with random names on them. We had to look at each and every one for our names, as that would be te person to take us to our connecting 2 hour bus ride back to Cusco and our hostels for the night. I had to race to the toilet and then we were escorted to the most uncomfortable bus for a dreary neverending bus ride back to the town centre...at this point the exhaustion and set in and we were aching from the magnitude of just how tired we really were. It seemed like an endless journey, but we were dropped off eventually and after about 45 minutes of aimlessly wandering around Cusco, as we got hopelessly turned around in the dark without a map, we made it our final destination...an Irish owned hostel on St Patrick's day eve...I am sure you can only imagine what that night was like.
We finally made it and I ran to the bathroom for what was foreshadowing events to come for the rest of the night, but I will get to that. We checked in and put our bags down in the 10 person dorm. I could not wait to take a shower...a nice hot shower with some soap and shampoo and conditioner...but that was not to be, as the water had been turned off. A tear ran down my cheek, as I climbed up to my top bunk and closed my eyes to "sleep" for the night. It didn't take long until I was awoken by an all too familiar grumble in my stomach. I tried to lay still and be calm, but I would not be able to last much longer. Then, all of a sudden the two young people in the bottom bunk decided to start having sex...yes, this is not a lie...they started having sex. Perfect. So now I have to climb down from the top bunk without my glasses on, down the ladder where the girl had left her backpack open right at the bottom of said ladder and then scurry to the bathroom to have explosive diarrhea in the middle of the night...and try to do this all while these people are having some sex. Why does G-d play these cruel jokes on me?
I basically fell off the ladder and landed on my butt on the girls backpack, which actually provided some cushioning so that was good. I basically put my hands in front of my body and shuffled along the floor in true blind person form until I made it to the toilet. I stayed in there for the next two hours have intermitenet bouts of explosive diarrhea mixed with laying my face on the cold tiled floor during my down time. Eventually, I was stable enough to leave the bathroom and make my way back to my top bunk of sin. Luckily, the two love birds had tired themselves out and were sleeping as well, but not for long. I came banging through the backpack, kicking some metal object that resonated a ringing noise when it banged against the metal lockers and then stepped through the first rung of the ladder stepping on some body part in the bed below, but managed to get to the top and shake off that trauma.
Closing my eyes to drift off to sleep was the next plan, but can you guess what happened next? They started having sex...AGAIN! I thought maybe it would only take a few moments, as they were clearly intoxicated from the St Patrick's Day party below (the music and sound of drunk people noise was endless that night I must add), but this was not to be. After about 10 more minutes of it, I said in a deep monotone voice, "stop having sex...stop having sex...stop having sex...," and I basically repeated this until they stopped. Then, I drifted off to broken sleep for the remaining 3 hours of the early morning to try and prepare myself for the 23 hour bus ride to Lima the following evening dreaming about the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu and all our new friends that we will never forget.