Heading toward our last country
So when we left you last, I was recovering from a nasty bout of food poisoning and my time in a cholera tent at a Doctors Without Borders (Medicines sans Frontiers) Hospital in Port au Prince, Haiti. I was devastated that we weren’t able to visit with female peacekeepers in Haiti due to my inability to keep anything solid or liquid in my body or stand up on my own. After the non-stop travel by air, rail, boat, UN and CARE security vehicles, tuk tuks, camel (ok that was cool), food we weren’t used to and not being able to drink the water anywhere we went, I kept thinking this trip would have been easier if I were 23 and not 43. Well we still had a week to go with our research travel and our final stop would be Ecuador. There was no turning back and there was no way we weren’t going because I ate some bad chicken. It would have been so much easier if it had been a direct flight to Quito from Port au Prince. But no, we had to stop in Miami. Miami. The US. Home. Clean bathrooms. Real Diet Coke and not that weird Coke Light stuff they have everywhere else on the planet. State of the art hospitals with electricity, clean water and no mice. And non-stop flights home to Los Angeles. As I sat at the gate waiting for a plane bound for Quito with a real Diet Coke in hand and armed with a fresh supply of Imodium and Pepto Bismol, I actually got excited about our final destination – Ecuador. We knew the country was beautiful but pictures don’t do it justice. Flying in through the clouds and landing virtually in the mountains would be a preview to an amazing week ahead. And PS: you can’t get Pepto Bismol in countries like South Africa. It’s truly an American thing so stock up if you plan on eating bad chicken abroad.
