Breakfasted down the other end again, the bottom end of town down in freak St, where Val had managed to upset her tin of tiny beads the other week. The problem was that she had run out of black beads, so wasn’t able to finish the headband that she’s been working on for 50% of her waking hours. She was only about 10 short tho’, so decided it was worth the effort + mild embarrassment of scrabbling around on the matting floor looking for strays. And we did indeed, at high cost to our fingernails, drag out a couple of dozen, including 4 blacks. Walked over to the Post Office + posted off our regular letter home, + then, pursuing our aim of killing the week as painlessly as possible, we took a trike taxi out to the Sheraton Hotel to make use of their pool. This cost us just over $1, so was affordable, provided we resisted the temptation to have a coke. We made do with iced water, + for most of the rest of the time just lay in the poolside loungers. We also had a swimming race, slightly awkward as it was a circular pool. Val won, narrowly. A lad from Liverpool, with an accent as broad as the Mersey, a couple of months out from England, who is staying co-incidentally at the same place, also popped in for a swim. A quick one, because they weren’t swift enough to catch him for his entrance money, so he skedaddled before they did.
We walked back from the hotel, which proved to be a huge mistake, since it was so much further than we thought. By the time we got back, we were both exhausted, + collapsed for a while on the roof, until the light went + it started to get cold. Tried the Plaza restaurant, a place serving, so they claimed, Austro-Hungarian food. It was quite nice, tho’ somehow not quite right, + a little greasy for my stomach. We both took heavy doses of a pill recommended by Tom + Jan. According to them, the stuff we tried before was good for appendicitis + not much else. So we were trying this one, one big does to hammer the giardia. I can only suppose that, in my case, they were the cause of my having to visit the toilet every half-hour all night. Strangely tho’, the things didn’t affect Val at all, tho’ maybe it’s simply because they didn’t have anything to attack. I had a miserable night – let’s hope it’s worth it.
Remarkable that we should still be able to scratch a couple of dozen tiny beads out of the carpet… though, actualoly, were we to go back now, I expect there are still a few of them lying there. The band turned out splendidly, and is currently displayed across the masthead of this site’s home page. And the actual thing, now framed, is hanging on our living-room wall.
