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I thought I'd add something of a postscript to our Peruvian Odyssey.
After we left Peru, Damian headed straight home and back to work, and I went on to Argentina for 10 days to attend a conference (Coasts and Estuaries). I spent a couple of days in Buenos Aires before the conference, discovering that Argentina has no problem shutting down all of its major tourist attractions at once for restoration. For years at a time. It was an interesting city though, with lots of street performers, plenty of tango and lots of nice wine, so it was a fun couple of days. Probably best that Damian wasn't with me though, given the meat, meat and more meat that is the Argentinian diet.
The conference was in Bahia Blanca, a city about 700km southwest of BA and it didn't take me long to meet up with others going to the same conference (there was also a civil engineering conference and it wouldn't do to get confused and attend the wrong one). It was a good week, with some interesting presentations, nice people, including some who may be useful contacts for work, and some interesting activities. They even organised tango lessons for us for a couple of evenings, which was quite fun, although the quality of the partners was a little dodgy. A Brazilian man who kept getting people to take photographs to show his wife and then tried to convince me to stay for weeks so that we could perfect the dance, and an Argentinian man whose idea of telling me what he wanted me to do was to point randomly at one foot. Suffice to say that I remain no expert.
We also went on the weirdest conference excursion I've ever been on, where we drove into the mountains, stopped by the side of the road and looked at a cool formation in the rock that looks like a window, back in the bus to a restaurant for a 2 hr lunch, then down to the coast to stand on the edge of the beach (beside the road again) in the middle of a coastal town to look at the water and then back to the hotel. I'm not really sure what it was intended to achieve.
The low light of the trip was the organisers deciding to food poison a fair number of us on the last day, which made for a miserable afternoon and trip back to BA. Fortunately, it was shortlived and I was feeling okay, if delicate, for my marathon journey home the next day. I made it back Monday, only delayed by 5 hrs, and still reasonably sane, despite the best efforts of a Kiwi teenager with ADD and a taste for crappy music. Damian picked me up from the airport and Jamie has now forgiven me for leaving (after a day of pointedly ignoring me). He also seems to be over his run-in with an electric fence while we were away.
So, everything is returning to normal. We're both back at work, and pretty well recovered from the jet lag. Now on to tackling the mountain of things that have been neglected for the last month. You have to love going back to work! But, on the whole, I'm glad to be back. A month of hotels and restaurant food is enough, and I'm loving cereal for breakfast and veggies for dinner again.
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