So Here's the Rub...

Traveling is exhausting. Adventure and cultural traveling is even more exhausting than your usual beach or camping vacation. Traveling in a language you don't even have a basic grasp of is headache-inducing. Traveling at altitude is exhausting. Traveling while sick is inherantly exhausting, and completely emotionally draining. Throwing all of yourself into a magical day at a place you never imagined you'd visit is thrilling, if not entirely exhausting.

I got up this morning, bright and early to go to the Isla Traquille. I asked for directions to the port from the hostel owner, and while he had been so helpful the night before, he lit into me about how crazy I was for trying to go without a tour, expecially since my spanish is SO horrible. Even after yesterday spent entirely on a bus driving from Cusco to Puno resting up from the dramatic efforts I made at Machu Picchu, I clearly had not recovered from my sickness and exhaustion. So someone calling me crazy, telling me how stupid I was, how much of an awful American who speaks no spanish I was... hitting at all of the things I feel like could be very, very true... I finally lost it. I ended up sleeping most of the day to stop from sobbing, reading a bit, and finally dragged my butt out of bed and made my way to a VERY gringo restaurant where I had an amazing eggplant parmasana style sandwich and chocolate caliente.

Luckily, it didn't start raining until I got back. It's hailing and dumping rain right now, thunder and lightning echoing in the distance. It¡s the first rain I've seen since I got to Peru, and damn it feels like home. The smell of it hitting the warm pavement, the sound of it on the plastic roof over the courtyard, the sparkling underneath the streetlamps. It feels like a little piece of Seattle.

So tomorrow I won't ask for directions. I know how to get to the port. I know how to ask for a ticket to the Isla Uros. I know how to manage my time, how to get food, how to get to the bus station, how to get through the last 4 days I have in Peru. I know that I can do this, as I have been doing it, even completely debilitated by 4 kinds of sickness. The well had simply run dry today, but maybe through a little food, a little chocolate, a little more sleep, and a little rain reminding me of home, there will be something there for me to pull from tomorrow.