Exhaust-choking, garlic-snorting, and back-of-the-throat-gouging that tears at your soft palette and skewers your brain like an over-zealous acupuncturist. That is my hangover.

My last night in Cusco was punctuated by a late night-early morning toast. I kissed the mouth of every Cusqueña beer bottle I could afford, and danced under the propulsion of bass laden American music. Madonna´s ¨Like a Virgin¨ and Will Smith´s ¨Welcome to Miami¨ serenaded my farewell from the colonial city that had once been the capitol of the entire Incan empire.

Passed out by 4:30 in the morning, I slept in typical John style until 3:30 pm, being sure not to fault myself eleven hours of sleep. It should be noted that at three in the afternoon I woke with curtains drawn and door locked as I opened my eyes to a shadowed room. My non-understanding gaze was met by my alarm clock whose hands held up the hour of three. ¨That can´t be right,¨ I thought, and in my mind decided it best to roll over where the clock couldn´t see me close my eyes, fall back asleep, and wake up when it decided to tell the right time. Half an hour later I lay on my back eying the ceiling and contemplating the fact that it would be dark in three hours. I reached for my book on the night stand, only five more chapters until I could trade it in for another, and it was constantly biding me to finish it. I read one seemingly long chapter trying to coerce my mind into waking up. With a heavy sigh I kicked the four wool blankets off the lower half of my body and sat straight up as quickly as I could. I have learned through years of forcing myself awake that a quick jolt, serving to surprise the rest of my body, is the only way I can remove myself from complete comfort. I feel my mind dare my body to get up. ¨Go ahead, just try it,¨ says my mind, ¨but I can think of a dozen reasons why it is better for us to stay...¨ With that my body jerks and rights itself. My mind quickly changes tactics and mumbles something about ¨reverse psychology¨ to my insensible muscles.

Five minutes later I found myself under the dull and eking pulse of my hostel´s communal shower. I had to keep the pressure low to ensure the piss-warm water stayed that way. To take my mind off the drizzle that thinly coated me from the cold of the bathroom, I set to making meaningful shapes out of the painted splotches on the shower tile: a rabbit, a smiling cyclops, a phoenix bust lying on the back of its head and staring fixedly at the source of my feeble shower.

Refreshed enough, I turned off the water and dried myself damp with my camp towel, then began to dress myself in the clothes I had worn from my room to the bathroom: the same clothes I wore last night. I bent over to pick up my pants and unfurled them from the crumpled ball they had been sitting in. With the first movement the folds released a wall of stale cigarette smoke that overwhelmed my senses and set me to gagging back the tar and nicotine bouquet. The mud thick wall rose from every weave of fabric and I was overcome by a stench that made me want to wash myself again. Having no other options, as my room lay outside and down the courtyard from the bathroom, I gingerly donned my cigarette-saturated clothes. As I did this, I took great care to insist they hung off the fewest points of contact on my frame as possible. Giving myself a second baptism in smoke I shuffled out of the bathroom and down toward my room, moving my joints as little as possible so still clean parts of my body would not come into contact with my asphyxiating clothes. Once back in my room, I took off my smoke-woven clothes and changed into freshly washed ones.

Charging by the kilo, many laundry services forgo both washer and dryer as soap is run over a washboard fixed into the sink and clothes are wrung under water by heavy calloused hands of a Peruvian. A sophisticated drying apparatus consisting of a string slung from nail to nail or peg to peg is employed to starch the shirts dry in the high altitude air of the Andes. As I dressed I noticed that my shirts, pants, and socks hung loose on my body, as they had not shrunk back to their original size under the electric heat of a conventional dryer. The starch-like stiffness of the line-dried clothes scratched at my skin like tickles of straw as I run through a field of wheat bare-chested.

I packed my pockets full for my walk into the center of Cusco, ¨La Plaza Del Armas,¨ where a new friend of mine would be waiting shortly to say goodbye. He would be standing idly in front of an elaborate fountain that lit up at night, illuminating the greens and whites of its metal body as water cascades off it and geysers from it. Camera flashes no doubt volley for attention as they beam off of its reflective surface. Two white egrets, carved and forever fixed in place on the fountain, drink from its circulating water without tasting a drop. There would be Broos. Standing close to the source, and waiting for his four day friend to arrive and say goodbye for who knows how long. Across the Atlantic and back at home in Belgium. Thousands of miles had before separated both he and I, but thousands of miles in another direction had introduced us. His imminent return and my delayed trip back home, would again put two friends out of reach. But so is the course of traveling friends. Your paths crossed once at seemingly random geographical points, at guessed upon time intervals, and perhaps if that is how that friendship was forged, fated, or given to free will, then that is how their next meeting will be. Unforced and unplanned, but re-introduced at some random point or at some fated time. I thought briefly on all this, not wanting to waste too much time on circumstances, and did a cursory check of both my pockets and my room to make sure I had all that I would need. Money, sunglasses, reading book, guide book, business cards, pocket knife, notepad, pen, keys, and camera. I stuffed what I could into my cargo pants pockets, and put the rest into my shoulder bag, clicked off the light, closed the door, and left my hostel.

I found Broos where he said he would be. We said our hello´s, then a few hours later we said our goodbyes. That was it. I collected my bags from my hostel, flagged down a taxi, and rushed to the bus station, where a giant sleeper bus was waiting to carry me ten hours that night to another city, Arequipa. I left Cusco, its cathedrals, its fountains, its bars, its restaurants, its cafes, its people, and a good amount of new friends. The last time I was in that city I was sure it would be my last. But I returned. Now I sit next to a cab driver who tells me he´s a transplant from Arequipa now living in Cusco. I´m young, the world is getting smaller, perhaps I will see the light play off the cascading ripples of that fountain again. Perhaps I will again see Broos and a wealth of my other traveling friends. Maybe, but like trying to catch a feather dancing on an unfelt breeze, you can´t force it. Let the both of you come together gently and in baited time. That is when it will happen, in its own time.