on the toilet in Arequipa

It was those god damn chicken empanadas that I´d ate in one of Arequipa´s main terrapuertos (bus stations). We were hungry and bored waiting for some fellow Australianos who had got the bus from Lima after us. Two hours we had to burn and while preparing a welcome sign had taken all of 2 minutes, we found this dingy cafe at the back of the bus stop. I jumped at that choice on the menu, having had such wonderful experiences with empanadas in Santiago. Those crisp pastries, wrapped over flavoursome insides of meat, tomato, mushrooms and a variety of other choices, only to find a floppy, damp, microwaved imitation slapped down in front of me.

Now I am sitting hunched over, shitting my guts out with a mild bout of food poisoning. Perhaps the gods are telling me something with their usual ironic mirth, laughing at my expense, that I should´ve stuck to my guns and stayed a vegetarian. Their joke on me is I suppose that I get food poisoning from eating chicken when all those around me (a total of seven) are all vegetarians (save one other) and my arguments for breaking fall on deaf ears, that vegetarianism was too difficult and restrictive in South America, when some of them have been on the continent for more than six months. None of them have had food poisoning by the way. Bastards!