The Lima Report:

Or Hobbling Abroad

They say when you lose one sense other senses become heightened in response.  I know this to be true, for having lost my ability to walk my sense of sadness has greatly increased. I can feel sad pretty much anytime I want to.  

The reason behind this situation is multifaceted, however, Anna prefers to simply reduce it to “Nate, you fucked up.”

I won’t bore into the details of the whole sob story, ultimately, I have psoriatic arthritis.  This means every 5 months or so my immune system decides to drop an atomic bomb on my joints, in particular, my right knee and my left foot (don’t worry, I didn’t know that was a joint either) leaving me with tortoise speed and a toddler’s capacity for pain in a hair’s body.  Usually I can just take a shot of Humira (a wonder drug) that takes all my symptoms away and the only side effect is I lose my super human ability to feel sad at all times.

Due to a procrastinators approach to getting my  yellow fever vaccine, and a little complication the medical field calls contraindications, I am forced to wait 3 weeks before I can take my Humira shot.  Otherwise, I risk destroying my immune system while I have a live vaccine of a deadly virus inside me.  

The waiting isn’t so bad in itself, but just to further complicate things the shots I have are 3 years expired and cannot exceed a temperature of 77 degrees F.  The whole thing is like watching the movie Speed in slow motion, except the speedometer is a thermometer and instead of keeping it high, it’s all about keeping it low.  

The whole thing is nothing like the movie speed… But let’s put Keanu Reeves in it anyway, because I like the pace of his dictation.

By a stroke of luck we landed in Kaclla: The Healing Dog Hostel.  Greeted by  a dark grey skinned animal with some Michael Jackson splotches and and a white mohawk, it looked like Stripe from the Gremlins, initially, I thought we had made a terrible mistake.  We soon learned that this creature was not the evil leader of the gremlins but a Kaclla.  Kaclla is the Quecha name for the Peruvian hairless dog that is known for providing relief to those suffering from… Dun. Dun. Dun. Arthritis! (Arf-ritis?)

Are you fucking kidding me!?  I was interobanging about this for the rest of the day.

My whole attitude changed toward Stripe.  I now saw the Gizmo inside him.  But when I tried to pet him it was back to gross-me-out town, my sense of touch puking all over my brain.  Loving a hairless dog is a whole different ballgame.  Their skin is strangely sticky.  The pat is much more effective and gratifying than the pet.  Apparently, the dog needs to oiled often or its skin will dry out.

All in all loving a dog like this is a chore, a forced acceptance, like a child taking Robitussin.  And so, because of that, I firmly believe the legend that this dog is medicine.  

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Lima, the largest desert city, will eventually fall into the sea.  The tourist areas are built up on sea cliffs made of dirt and loose rock which are rapidly eroding and historically prone to earthquakes.  They dress this hills up in chainmail to slow the erosion, and because I imagine they think it looks cool.  And as cool as they may appear it puts off an anachronistic vibe typical of the tourist vibe throughout Peru, a vibe anchored in the exploitation of ancient ruins and traditions by Starbucks, Papa Johns, Burger King, McDonalds, KFC, Popeyes… and on and on until some 100 years in the future when tourists are getting tattoos of these corporate logos imagining it was some important worshiped symbol of the past.  And they would be right.