More Goodies from Colca Canyon

After arriving back in Arequipa, we took it pretty easy, good food, a visit to the Museo Santuarios Andina to see a frozen Incan body recovered from a nearby volcano (Ahhh, ritual sacrifice!), some more good food (the food here is AMAZING) and strolling the streets. We reserved an AM bus to Cusco and headed to the hotel to turn in early, and as we checked in with the reception to pick up our tickets, H stepped on my foot.

Normally this wouldn´t cause more than a small squeal, but in this case my pre-injured toenail was no defense against a shoe and my nail tore completely off, blood flowing freely. We both overreactd a bit at the sight of it....me crouching and crying and moaning and H pacing and also moaning. Thankfully the poor guy at the front desk had more poise than either of us and called a taxi to whisk us to the clinic across town. The pain really didn´t match the queasiness and fear I felt from looking down at my toenail sticking straight up and blood covering my sandal.

Luckily, the clinic, though bare bones, was great. After arriving to "yowtch"y stares at my bloody toe and waiting on a gurney for maybe 20mins, I got treated by a Nashville trained Arequipian(yee haw) who was very gentle and thankfully anesthetised my toe before cutting the nail off and cleaning it. We did have to pay, but not much by US standards. I think it came to about 20 bucks. He prescribed an antibiotic, and some cleaning solution and now I have to unwrap, clean, and re-wrap the toe every other day. We bought some knockoff brand hiking boots to protect it and they work great. I will never ever wear those toekilling sneakers again. We left them at our hostel.

I hope someone with smaller feet finds them useful.