August 25, Lima

Tomorrow I am off to Iquitos to find myself a jungle tour. I didn´t get to Laeticia, the Amazon outpost in Colombia, so I will go to the jungle here in Peru.

G was not able to pick me up from the airport after all, though I did not get the email before I left Bogota. I waited in the airport for 2 hours for him before I went to check the internet, but this was okay because I met a lovely Australian, my age, who has been living in Lima with her local boyfriend for 3 years. She is an ex-competitive skier from Jindabyne. It has been great to meet her, talk English, meet Peruvians, go to bars for live music and pisco sours.

I´m so far behind in my story. I believe I left off in Palomino, after getting my phone stolen. I went to find N after leaving the two Riohachans. I found him playing pool at an outdoor bar. I greeted him but he was uninterested in talking to me. I decided to leave Palomino as I only really came back for N and D. As I walked past with my backpack, though, N asked if I was leaving and if I wanted a beer. So I stayed and drank while this sleazy man talked to me in Spanish and gave me weird looks. N insisted he was a nice man and I was misinterpreting things. He said I should stay and took my backpack back to the hut.

That night N, D and I went to the beach. We went to C's camping hostel. C is the one who was supposed to meet me in Palomino originally. I asked C if he had been contacted by S and C from Tayrona and he said no, that he was very sorry he didn´t meet me but he may not have been in Palomino when his friends were calling. C was very nice, my age, chatty (in English), open, and kept telling me he was upfront, honest, talked to everybody the same, men and women alike, didn't expect anything from the women he talked to. He kept giving me cocktails (rum, coke, lime).

N and I went down to the beach, got naked, and had sex in the waves. This was beautiful as well as awkward and hilarious and fun. The waves were full of those beautiful phosphorescent beads. N was quite drunk but he´s much more fun when drunk - and seems like he can only make a move when he is drunk. I like N. And I felt bad that he knew about Jason. I just had sex with Jason. N I actually like and wanted to have sex with him.

When we got back up to the group of travellers around a campfire, N kept drinking and got drunker and drunker. I got drunker too, but not that drunk. C then decided to prove himself wrong and come on to me, saying he wanted me to come home with him. He kept asking if I felt comfortable as he sucked my bottom lip and wooed me. I was not comfortable, but I said that I was. What is my problem? So partly lured by the promise of a bed and a shower I went home with C. The bed was an unblown-up mattress on the floor inside mosquito netting and the shower was bowls of water (this isn´t a bad way to shower), but it was decidedly more comfortable than the kitchen tent at D and N's. Sometime in the early morning, I had sex with C, sex I didn´t particularly want to have and that was quick and ordinary.

And of course I felt bad about leaving N passed out near the fire, but I don't have patience for that kind of drinking. I wish he had stayed sober enough to be possessive of me. But I can´t blame him for my bad behaviour. In the morning I went back to N and D's but neither of them were there. I grabbed my stuff and caught a bus Santa Marta so that I could catch another bus to Aracataca the next morning.

I did see Marquez's childhood home in Aracataca. Then I took the bus all the way back to Palomino because I realised that I had N's money, the money he put in my pocket at the beach. I had totally forgot about it. I felt so guilty for leaving without saying goodbye after abandoning him at the beach and then taking his money (he has very little) that I had to go back. I went to the farm but neither N or D was there. I left the money and a note, but I found N on the main street as I stopped to wait for the bus. I apologised and took his contact details. He was obviously surprised that I came back, and grateful, I think. He didn´t seem angry at me, though he did say he was feeling down.