Laynes next appointment to get her leg wound irrigated and checked is Monday so until then we are waiting and as we wait in Arequipa a vast category four hurricane is devastating…Appalachia? What weirdness is this? In Arequipa an overflowing faucet of some sort is wasting desert water and no one notices and I am pondering the misery of hurricane recovery.
The story out of Tampa Bay and Big Bend seem normal enough, debris, misery and uncertainty but the deaths by flooding reported in the. Carolina’s and Georgia and even Tennessee are extraordinary. We celebrated a German overlander’s birthday with cake and Jäegermeister (yuck) and Layne called her sister outside Asheville. They have cell service thanks to a neighbor with Starlink but they are trapped in their community as the main bridge over the river is washed away. Just like that.
Seven Mile Ridge Road over the Little Toe River is gone.
Just one of so many disasters around Asheville that has cut communications and left people isolated. Key West meanwhile has forgotten the high drama of fifty mile an hour winds from their modest sideswipe. We went out to lunch and had crepes at a French restaurant, what a bizarre contrast to our many hurricane survival memories.
Traffic is the big hassle in Arequipa and with Layne not supposed to walk taking cans and Ubers everywhere gets old.
There are only four vans left in the campground and one van is leaving for Cusco today. The weird California family doesn’t talk to the rest of us but crouch over their laptops ignoring us which is probably best. To get a comment from a reader who has met them boggled my mind. The campground does not reverberate to the sounds of joyous youth at play.
Day follows day as we wait for our departure date hopefully Friday.
