"Buenas mananas! This is your wake-up call."

I was determined to lose weight over the next two weeks. I figured in a series of countries that used fresh tropical fruit, fish, and vegetables like kale and peppers as staples, coupled with the thirteen days of consistent, intense physical exertion, it wouldn't be incredibly difficult.
However, when I saw the terrace buffet forty-five minutes of dreamless sleep later, I realized Anthony Bourdain was not lying when he said Lima had 35 of the highest ranked eateries in South America, four in the world, and was becoming the new culinary epicenter of the southern hemisphere.
The dishes presented seemed traditional Andean with a French flair--lots of cream, lots of cheese, usually on some sort of delicately plated, egg-brushed, sugar-dusted pastry. I had to pretend none of it would taste as good as it looked in order to settle on some roasted green beans, red sweet peppers, and fresh fruit.

As per usual (god love her), Grandma was wasn't taking "6:30am" as an ultimatum so much as a suggestion. So, being late, I had to figure out how to eat aforementioned green beans out of a to-go container provided by one of the waiters, without any utensils, in rush hour traffic in Lima.

I've driven in Chicago, New York City, LA, and London. Traffic doesn't intimidate me. However, I also never become car sick or pray. All three of my usual dispositions were immediately struck down at the arrival of the first roundabout. Lanes were merely suggestions. So were turn signals. And breaks. Bumper-to-bumper doesn't even come close to describing the automative clusterfuck that is Lima at 7am on a Tuesday.
In my experiences, police normally only direct the flow of traffic in situations involving blown-out lights, accidents, or special, street-hogging events. In Lima, however, there are little watchtower-type boxes in the middle of the lanes where one officer sits while two or three more stand amidst the cars or on intersection corners and authoritatively reinforce the demands of various lights, signs, and signals.

In Lima, very few women drive. You look around and see about 90% men on the driver's side of vehicles, due in part of the tradition of women not working outside of the home in the days before cars. However, the ones that do drive are only on the streets at peak hours as they run a sort of school bus/carpool service in which they cram their vehicles full of other people's children, deliver them to school, and return them home in the afternoon. The women who aren't working from their homes or their Toyota Corollas take the bus.
The buses are also very different here than the US or Europe. No two look alike and rather than being plastered in stickers or shrink-wrap ads, they have one big logo across the side. In Peru, buses aren't government funded public transportation. Each is privately owned and operated, taking passengers by request to within walking distance of their desired location. There are no city taxis, either. Like London, they're also privately owned. But unlike London, they aren't really licensed, and instead of actual cars, they're little tin boxes called "tuk-tuks" that are imported from India and look like some cross between a Yugo and one of those Fischer-Price, pedal-driven cars made for toddlers. According to Miguel, they are indeed as safe as they look. In fact, several times a day, tuk-tuks believe they can outrun an actual car to an opening two lanes over, but unfortunately aggression is worth noting without a seatbelt and a steel frame.

*****

By the time we reached the airport (a whole four-and-a-half hours after initially arriving!), my fingers were completely numb.

At first, I believed as a side-effect of my death grip on the seat and a never-ending train of Hail Mary's and headlights, but later, I learned it was a nasty consequence of the diamox our grandma had force-feeding us to reduce the chances of developing altitude sickness. 

Diamox is a drug used to treat glaucoma, and works by oxygenating the blood…and in the Andes at an altitude of 12,000 feet, you need all the oxygen you can get. What they don't mention (or rather, what my grandma didn't mention, specifically because "then you'll start psyching yourself into thinking you have all the symptoms and side-effects…" which is obviously better than silently fearing that you're most definitely having a stroke), is on occasion it will make your fingers tingle--and in my case, turn blue--as well as work as a diuretic…

In addition to the altitude, the arid climate in the Andes during its June-November winter season will dehydrate you quite easily, so drinking up to two or two-and-a-half litres of water a day comes highly recommended. However, upon the introduction of diamox, that two litres of water will stay in your system a whole of fifteen minutes before you have the urgent need to void your bladder. Now, when I say "urgent," I'm putting it politely. "Urgent" is an understatement. You can forget anything you've ever learned about PC muscles and "holding it in" because diamox will promptly null and void that contract, no questions asked. To make the situation better, the quick turnaround of water leaves you groggy and with a headache, and therefore a need for even more water, and the the cycle is then free to endlessly repeat itself.

*****

Between my blue lips and fingertips, an inability to touch anything without the harsh sensation of pins and needles shooting through my hands, and an eventual resignation to the fact that I had either contracted a UTI in the last eight hours that would most likely go untreated for the next two weeks, therefore leading to the lasting damage of my kidneys/I had permanently damaged my kegel muscles beyond repair, both of which meaning I would just have to spend the rest of my life in adult diapers to avoid any of the embarrassing repercussions that come with a dysfunctional bladder, I was convinced I was slowly dying.
Yeah, well, you really don't feel the anxiety of imminent death until you're told that while on this medication, if you're able to…catch up on your reading, so to speak, every 4-6 days, you're considered one of the lucky ones.