Wednesday, February 20, 2008

And Then Reality Slaps You Right in the Face

We survived bizarre airline food on the way down, homemade right out of the goat's teet cheese from Andean farmers, salmon and other fish ceviche in Santiago, Cruise ship food prepared on a ship registered in the Bahamas by a Swedish chef and captained by a German living in St. Louis, locally brewed Ushaihian beer; but we were done in by a sandwich from Starbucks in the Santiago airport. How benign. Dena and I are suffering horribly from food poisoning. We're pretty sure it was the avocado/chicken sandwich we picked up at the airport. The good news is that we made it through the entire trip very healthy. The bad news is that we are unable to fully enjoy our jet lag at home.

Some people poo poo the whole jet lag thing. I can tell you that jet lag is real and it affects you whether the trip was 1 hour or 20 hours long and the length of the effect is directly proportional to the length of the trip. That my friends is reality. My digestive tract has never been the same since our trip in 1997 (god that seems like a long time ago) to Jordan. It was some buffet fish or chicken or god knows what that gave me campylobacter. That was the end of my cast iron stomache. Ever since then any time we travel I get some sort of stomache thing. In East Africa we carried antibiotics with us and that saved me on the 2nd night. Never underestimate the importance of a personal stash of prescription drugs while travelling in 3rd world countries.

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