As many of you know, I am a clumsy guy. I have a tendency to drop and spill things, trip, fall down and bump into people on a regular basis. My clumsiness was in full force during our travels and to help share the pain (and hopefully laughter) I’ll recount a few of the more memorable mishaps.
- Falling in the creek. I have crossed many creeks in Peru, often with no incident. But not this time. My friend and co-worker Sandy and I were on our way into the village of Chaipa early one morning and it was quite cold (probably just a few degrees above freezing). After trekking down a steep hill (where I miraculously didn’t fall), we had to cross a creek on a series of stepping stones. Sandy, being smarter and more agile than me, crossed it without incident. While I find that it is generally better to cross stepping stones quickly and confidently, I didn’t do that in this case. I took the slow, tentative approach. And sure enough, halfway across, I slipped on a rock, lost my balance and landed with both feet and my backside in the creek. On the bright side, I did manage to keep my hands and the bucket of tools I was carrying out of the water. And I provided some good entertainment for Sandy and for the two guys sitting on a rock about 30 feet away.
- Don’t kneel there. Towards the end of our recent travels, we visited the city of Valparaiso, Chile. I think it is one of the most photogenic cities I’ve ever seen and I took a lot of pictures there. For one photo, I was trying to capture a tall church steeple and needed to kneel down to get an unobstructed view of the steeple. I was very intent on my photo and didn’t hear my wife as she yelled the words “stop!” and “poop!” The words “Matt, don’t do it” (or something to that effect) did finally penetrate my brain, but too late. At that point, I was rising from my kneeling position and wondering if a car was bearing down on me or if the two guys moving church pews down the street were going to run into me. But no, instead I discovered that I had just kneeled in a small pile of dog poop.
- Bustin’ up the furniture. This is a twofer, one for an incident that happened in the Pisac market and the other in Santiago, Chile. The Pisac mishap occurred on Sunday market day as I was having lunch with Georgia and Katie at one of the lunch tables set up in the crowded market. I was sitting on a small plastic stool. As I tried to shift my weight and the position of the small plastic stool on which I sat, the thing completely collapsed, landing me in the street, to the great amusement of everyone around me. The Santiago incident had fewer witnesses. In this case, as I sat down on Georgia’s bed, the mattress and wood slats holding it up collapsed. At least this time it was a soft landing and I didn’t do any permanent damage to the bed.
- Nice view. As you may know from other blogs, one of my volunteer activities was to install concrete biosand filters in nearby local Peruvian communities. This occasionally involved carrying these very heavy filters (180-200 pounds) up steep, narrow trails. This required frequently setting the filters down to rest. As Sandy and I set a filter down one day in the town of Totora, the sharp edge of the filter caught the front of my baggie pants and ripped a large L-shaped hole in the front of them. The hole afforded a prime view of my leg and smiley-faced boxer shorts. Since this happened early in the morning and we had a long day ahead of us, many people got to see my pants in this state of disrepair. Our travels that day took us not only through Tortora but also past a nearby road construction site (a couple of miles long) and through the town plazas and main streets of the towns of Calca and Lamay, as well as on a bus full of people traveling between those two places. Needless to say, I got lots of interesting looks along the way. It is also worth noting that both Sandy and my daughter Georgia also suffered significant pant seam failures during our trip so at least I was not alone in this mishap.
- Wheelbarrow incident. I spent a lot of time in Peru moving things around in wheelbarrows – usually some combination of sand, gravel, concrete, tools and/or water filters. One day I was helping Sandy and his neighbor move a load of recently washed sand and gravel up a trail between his home/workshop and another house. At the end of the path, I needed to turn the wheelbarrow almost all the way around to face the path to the other house. For some reason I thought I could do this without stopping first – just keep up my momentum and make the turn on the run. Unfortunately I was wrong. As I attempted to make the turn, the slope of the trail and weight of the wheelbarrow pushed me backwards and I slid right off the trail as I watched the wheelbarrow overturn. I ended up sort of clinging to the slope, with just my hands and head above the trail. Fortunately I escaped with only minor injuries and laughed about this one for days every time I thought about it.
- Surprise on the bus. I regularly rode the local bus from Pisac to Lamay and back for my volunteer work. Most days on the return trip, the bus was very crowded and I had to stand. On one such day, an older woman urged me to take her seat. Having had a long day at my volunteer job, I accepted. However, it soon became apparent that the woman needed the seat more than I did. She seemed quite unstable on her feet as the bus swayed up the road. I urged her to take her seat back several times but she refused, mumbling about getting off at the next town and I’m not sure what else. As we neared her stop and the bus slowed quickly, she fell backwards into the aisle. As nobody else made a move to help her up, I got up and lifted her to her feet. A couple of minutes later, she got off the bus. By this time it was apparent that she probably had been doing quite a lot of drinking before boarding the bus. As I started to sit back down, a man behind me told me not to sit in the same seat, pointing out that it was quite wet – something I had somehow failed to notice earlier. But now I discovered that the back of my pants were indeed quite damp. Bummer! It seems the woman had had a bit of an accident before I sat in that seat.
I think these are the most notable of my various mishaps here but by no means the only ones. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed the retelling.
Matt
I'm leaving for Peru in less than a month to volunteer with Sandy and Sandra so your and Cathy's stories are fun and inspiring. You are both entertaining writers and help me visualize what it will be like, but hopefully not the falling down parts!
ReplyDeletePat Teti