I was sick over spring break.
(Thank you for that lovely "Awww!" I needed to hear that.)
Coughing. Aching. Chills.
So I was forced to do nothing this spring break but...read.
(Which is how I would have spent spring break anyway, right?
Albeit without the coughing, aching, and chills.)
For reasons that I cannot possibly ascertain, I spent my favorite reading hours this spring break
in South America. First I traveled with Mark Adams as he retraced the steps of
Machu Picchu discoverer Hiram Bingham. Then I went off with City of Z explorer Percy Fawcett
across the Amazon jungle.
Hiram and Percy led us through "insatiable thirst, skull-splitting headaches, and uncontrollable shivering," as we were "spitting up mouthfuls of blood." We tramped through lands with tribes of natives who "captured prisoners...they either kept...forever or roasted them to devour in their banquets." Swimming in the waters of the Amazon were not only the feared piranhas, the so-called "vampire fish of Brazil," but the horrifying candiru, a creature that is known for lodging in human orifices. Some of us contracted espundia, which "destroys the flesh around the mouth, nose, and limbs, as if the person were slowly dissolving" and others found maggots growing inside our open wounds.
Delightful, right?
Somehow I have survived all these horrors and,
though we never found the golden City of Z,
I am, happily, able to complete a sentence or two without incessant coughing.
Just in time to return to work tomorrow....
Hiram and Percy led us through "insatiable thirst, skull-splitting headaches, and uncontrollable shivering," as we were "spitting up mouthfuls of blood." We tramped through lands with tribes of natives who "captured prisoners...they either kept...forever or roasted them to devour in their banquets." Swimming in the waters of the Amazon were not only the feared piranhas, the so-called "vampire fish of Brazil," but the horrifying candiru, a creature that is known for lodging in human orifices. Some of us contracted espundia, which "destroys the flesh around the mouth, nose, and limbs, as if the person were slowly dissolving" and others found maggots growing inside our open wounds.
Delightful, right?
Somehow I have survived all these horrors and,
though we never found the golden City of Z,
I am, happily, able to complete a sentence or two without incessant coughing.
Just in time to return to work tomorrow....
