Return to The Jungle of Peru

Well getting back into Peru was easy, even though I had to abandon my attempt to get a visa as I ran out of time, the British consulate had so many stolen passports to replace they were running out of time to do mine and even asked me to come back later. So I have my unbelievably expensive new British passport that was about $175. I was also expecting problems with the flight ticket as the company had bought the e-ticket for me but the TACA webpage had insisted that I would be expected to produce the credit card that paid for it, this put everyone in my office into a spin to make sure that I could get on the plane on time. So I got my ticket without a question and the plane was on-time and my flight was uneventful which was pretty good. I hate all the flying these days so a stress free flight is what I want. The next day I arrived at the airline desk to fly to the Malvinas camp and just as I was expecting a trouble free entry to the plane, she looked at my medical card and gave it me back, saying in a perfect English voice, “ sorry but your Flu vaccine is expired so you cannot travel”. I protested that I could have it in the camp, this was a serious error on my part, I should have checked but with all the other crap I have to do it had completely slipped my mind. She rang someone and I got the reply, “ you must go back to the main office and then go to the clinic for the vaccination and then get back here for the second flight”. This was a tall order as it is 20 Km each way, I went outside and jumped into a taxi and set about this task. The roads were packed solid and it took an hour to get back to office, I got my letter for the clinic and I was forced to hand over my medical card as they wanted to confirm that I had taken the vaccine instead of just filling in the card myself, I went to the clinic and you know how long it takes to give a vaccination, maybe 2 minutes at most but I was forced to sit and watch the clock tick round for 20 minutes until they called me in and the nice old lady only took 2 minutes to jab me, and let's face it this vaccination will take 2-6 weeks to get the full effect in my body so whether I took it here in the clinic or the camp is irrelevant, but you know rules are rules, oh how I hate that mentality. I got back into the taxi and he was pretty quick going back to the airport, in fact he was driving like a typical taxi lunatic. He was frightening me but the fact of missing the plane was more frightening, my brand new manager would have been thinking the worse of me, I have never missed a plane because of my fault and never got the to jobsite late because of my fault. So this would have been my fault and he would have given me a black mark against my name, this I don’t need when I am trying to get to Qatar. I got back with 15 minutes before flight time, I was given the ticket directly as they were waiting for me, I marched through the terminal and the gate was opened just as I arrived within 10 minutes we were flying, I had survived the trial of endurance. Getting back to the Malvinas camp was basically a return home for me, I have been here 6 previous trips and I know all the guys it was just the thought of eating steamed chicken again that gave me the shivers. The weather was fantastic, sunny and hot and humid, the turbines were running fine and life is good. I got down to some work to start with, I was downloading tons of great pictures of birds for my bird book, in fact I found a flickr site that had possibly the best hummingbird pictures I have seen and this was from an amateur. Just check out this hummingbird, called a black Crested Coquette fantastic, I hope I can keep finding pictures like this.