Seth Kinast’s Blog

Having arrived at the site around 9, we finally left about 6 that evening. But we didn’t go in the direction of home… we went the other way! We stopped at some villages and went sightseeing. Dr. Noé’s wife explained that the people rarely got away from their village. That was all well and good, but there are limits to Seth’s endurance.

We got to a pretty good-sized little town, and wound the van through cobblestone streets. Narrowly missing vendors, we crawled through pathways barely big enough for the van. Children yelled and waved as we passed by. A bored policeman watched us trundle by. We made it up a large hill, but barely, as it was quite steep and the van was very old. We were about to head back down the highway when someone said, “Hey, where’s the truck?” The truck was a manual and was unable to make it up the hill. We turned around and went back through the village to find the truck. We wound the van through cobblestone streets. Narrowly missing vendors, we crawled through pathways barely big enough for the van. Children yelled and waved as we passed by. A bored policeman watched us trundle by. We found the truck and took another route. We were about to head back down the highway when someone said, “Hey, where is Victor?” We had left him somewhere in the village :/ We turned around and went back through the village to find the truck. We wound the van through cobblestone streets. Narrowly missing vendors, we crawled through pathways barely big enough for the van. Children yelled and waved as we passed by. A bored policeman watched us trundle… yeah, we’ve definitely done this before. Lauren and I started calling the town “City of Doom”. Johnny cackled fiendishly, “You shall never escape!” We found Victor and escaped. Johnny sulked at being wrong.

We finally started on our way back home, and I figured we’d be back by around 3 in the morning. Our trip was made less monotonous by my hourly pit stops to scurry off behind whatever hill, bush, or ditch was handy. We made it to a city and went to a small restaurant. Joy! They had a real toilet that flushed. Feeling much better afterwards, I came out and had ham and eggs and rice with everyone else. I was feeling fine as we set out on the road, only a couple hours left to go. Dr. Noé handed me some pills and told me to take them. I reached for the nearest bottle, which (catastrophically) was a bottle of water with electrolytes in it that he had given me earlier. For those of you that are uninitiated, electrolytes are important for your body to function, and you lose them quickly through vomiting and diarrhea. However, electrolytes taste like a Bad Thing. Kinda like drinking sweat. Blehhhhh. So I wasn’t expecting to wash the pills down with sweat, and it didn’t sit very well. Kind of like a little rock in my stomach. I managed to keep it down for a couple minutes (”Deep breaths, Seth!”) but it was no use.

BLOOIE!

Ham and eggs all over. I felt so terrible at being an inconvenience… I hate feeling like the problem. But (thankfully?) the car wasn’t too messed up, most was on me… so a quick change of clothes later and we were pretty much back in business. The rest of the trip passed with little trouble, except for a few more pit stops.

We got home about 4, and I stumbled to my bed, where I would remain for the next 28 hours. Except, of course, for frequent trips to bow down at Montezuma’s porcelain throne…