Well, my trip with the elderly has come to a close, and I've moved on to greener pastures....my friend Ryan's apartment in Chile that is.
The last few days of my geriatric tour were spent in the jungle. When they say "it's a jungle out there" you don't get the impression that the jungle is somewhere you would like to visit, and believe me, it's not. To get to the jungle the oldies and I took a small wooden boat 4 hours down a river, past a town marked with a sign that read "Welcome to Hell." This is not a joke. During these 4 hours our guide kept abruptly stopping the boat to point out random birds that to me looked a lot like pigeons.
When we arrived at our jungle lodge it was dark out, so I wrongly assumed we would be remaining indoors. But no, our guide, Angel, felt that it would be best to take a walk through the jungle in the pitch black. When asked if there was anything dangerous we might encounter Angel assured us that, oh yes, there were poisonous snakes on the path. And indeed there were.
Now typically our main tour guide, Gustavo, is with us at all times. (Incidentally, Gustavo told me a funny story about a friend of his who makes leather pants...the friend couldn't sell any until a "very famous American" loved them and bought a pair. Who might that be......Hulk Hogan. Haha, what a fashion icon!) Anyway, Gustavo was bumped from our flight to the jungle due to overbooking - strangely our plane was half empty on the actual flight, so I'm thinking that Gustavo knew what a pointless journey we were heading on and abandoned us. But not before he appointed Leslie, a retired high school teacher from Australia, to be our substitute leader. Actually, I think he only told Leslie that she was responsible for paying the airport taxes, but Leslie took this to mean that she was in charge of every detail of our trip for the next three days. She was absolutely and completely OUT OF CONTROL with this duty. Angel would tell our group that dinner would be served at 8, and Leslie would feel the need to repeat exactly what he said, but louder. "Ok team, that's DINNER AT EIGHT!" Yes Leslie, Angel just said that. And it just went on and on...
Leslie: "Team, do we all have our sunblock?"
Everyone: "Yes Leslie"
Leslie: "Team, I think we should all keep a close eye on our things"
Everyone: "Yes Leslie"
Angel: "Let's meet at 7:00"
Leslie: "LET'S MAKE THAT 7:15 TEAM!!"
...and so on.
By no means did Leslie need to do this, as Gustavo had done this not at all for the previous three weeks. Leslie clearly relished her role, and then kept remarking how she should get paid for this, as though it were being forced on her. Oh Leslie. I do wish Leslie had regulated and told everyone to have some shame - I saw two of my older group- mates in their undies while they were changing in their rooms, doors wide open. Doors are for shutting people!
What else. We took a 3 hour stroll (and I say stroll, as we were walking exceedingly slowly) on our second day in the forest. I think it should have been a 20 minute walk. Lyle, with the cotton ears, was very concerned about some mushroom that Angel passed around for us to feel.
Lyle (clearly flustered): "Are these poisonous? These might be poisonous!"
Yes Lyle, they are poisonous, and that's why they pass them out to large groups of tourists. Oh Lord.
There were a few "scares" in the jungle, mainly because Angel would suddenly begin to walk very slowly and wave his machete around, not indicating to us what he was sensing. When a man with a machete looks tense you should be too. We never did see anything of note though, with the exception of a long line of ants carrying 10 times their body weight in leaves. Good for them. Angel assured us that the other animals (i.e. jaguars) wouldn't bother us unless we bothered them. He said that is the way of animals, but in light of my recent attack by a random, possibly rabid dog I'm not sure I believe him.
Further along in our walk, I had just begun to drift off when I heard Angel tell the group about some "re-virginization" technique using bark. Hmm. He mentioned that many women who use this already have children, so it did not seem to me to be a great ruse. I could see it being popular in some circles of NYC though.
By the last night in the jungle I realized that the past three weeks in the traveling nursing home have aged me at least 40 years. At the lodge they were playing only soft rock music from the 80s ("I'm never gonna dance again, guilty feet have got no rhythm".... By the way, WHAT are those lyrics!!), and I knew all the words. Lyle, Sheila (my roommate, also a grandmother) and I had a sing-a-long to "The Sound of Silence" while we sipped our tea. Elaine, age 74, was playing Sudoku next to us. We spent some time discussing the relative merits of K-Mart vs. Walmart. I went to bed at 8:30. Before bed I started telling my new friends about how elderly people die in large numbers on cruise ships, and how they store the bodies in a freezer on board, but then I realized it might be the wrong crowd for that story.
In other news, Alan Garcia was just elected President of Peru. Strange, because he was already President of Peru once, from 1985 to 1990, and from what I can gather his presidency was considered a resounding disaster. Funny, the whole time I was in Peru I thought his name was "Alan Peru" because that's what all the signs said. But that confused me. It would be like Bush's promotional materials reading "George America". Also funny is that Alan Peru looks exactly like my old hamster Colonel, but I do find that a lot of people look like Colonel. He just had one of those faces.
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