After our eight days in the Amazon, I must admit that my hygiene standards have reached a new low.
Because of all the sweat and bug spray, I found myself wearing the same clothes again and again because, heck, I didn’t want all of my clothes to suffer. This move was initially a tough one for me to make, as I’m someone who likes clean(ish) clothes every day, but after a while, no biggie!
Ohmyword though, those clothes reeked. While at Tahuayo Lodge, we did take advantage of the 'jungle laundry wash' one day, and for a brief moment, our clothes smelled good again.
As I mentioned in my last post, once we got to the Amazon Research Center (ARC), there were no hot showers -- just cold ones. So I kind of, sort of got clean in the shower (ok, I'm lying -- I just can't fully immerse myself in a cold shower).
And then there's the teeth brushing piece. At both the Lodge and the ARC, water was pumped in from the Tahuayo River. I already shared that this river is full of tannic acid, due to the tannins that leach into the water from decayed vegetation. And none of the pumped-in water gets treated before coming out any faucets. So we used filtered water to brush our teeth. But when you have a low amount of filtered water in your water bottle, and you don't want to go outside your room to get more water for fear the mosquitoes will eat you alive, you may just skimp a bit on brushing your teeth. Just maybe...
On that Tuesday plane ride from Iquitos to Lima, we were all downright dirty. Our clothes were dirty, our hair was dirty -- and we were cool with it. I'd like to think we were cool with it because we'd gone a tad jungle, but in reality, our hygiene defenses had been worn way, way down.
*****
My shower on Wednesday morning felt amazing, and I emerged from the bathroom feeling like a new person. I put on fresh clothes (!) and let my hair down (there would be no tight ponytail today).
I also had one mission for Wednesday: Find a lavanderia to wash a mound of clothes. We moved from the airport hotel to a hotel in the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima for a better day's stay, and right at check-in, I asked: “Is there a lavandería nearby?” I learned that yes, there was a lavandería about two blocks away. Bonanza!
Tim, the kids, and I dumped our clothes out on the two beds in our hotel room, and started a ‘must get washed’ pile. We stuffed the clothes into Wyatt’s bag, and I set off for the lavandería. It was close to noon, and we needed the clothes back same-day, so time was of the essence.
I was in such a good mood walking to the lavandería, imagining what it would be like to have freshly washed clothes once more.
And then I actually got to the ‘lavandería.’ It was a dry cleaner’s, not laundry service. My heart sank. In broken Spanish, I asked the woman behind the counter about a lavandería. She told me about a place on Avenue 28 de Julio. No doubt she told me more than that, but that’s all I picked up on.
I jumped on google maps and figured out the place on 28 de Julio: Style and Clean. It didn’t seem like a far walk, and I was hell-bent on getting clothes washed, so I got going.
At Style and Clean, I had my vaccination card checked before I could enter. And once I did enter, I could see another dry cleaning operation…not washers and dryers. I talked to a Style and Clean employee who spoke some English, and learned that the shop wasn’t set up to wash laundry by the kilo. They could wash my clothes, but for about 15 soles (about USD$4) per item. I probably had 30+ items in my bag, and even I, in my desperate state, wasn’t about to pay that much for clean clothes. The employee told me about another place, Lavandería de San Antonio, where I could get my clothes washed by the kilo. Off I went, deeper into Lima in search of the almighty wash.
I found Lavandería de San Antonio and used my broken Spanish and questionable miming to request laundry service. “Si, si,” the woman behind the desk said. And then I said something like, “Clothes necessary back today” and she scowled and said no, that they’d have to come back tomorrow. But tomorrow wasn’t going to work, because we were getting on a bus at 6am.
At this point, it was 1:30pm. I was hot and my back was sweaty from carrying this packed bag around. I decided to give up, and resigned myself to another day of dirty, smelly clothes.
I walked many blocks back to the hotel and considered starting a bath to hand wash some clothes. But then I’d be blow drying clothes in the bathroom and most likely repacking wet clothes and that all just sounded like a lot of work.
The big bummer is that all of our dirty clothes got that much stinkier in the bag, being all squished together. We laid some of the worst offenders around the room, hoping air would help.
Later in the afternoon, Tim got the idea to hit up a pharmacy for an aerosol spray. We couldn’t get clean clothes, but at least they could smell better!
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| Three cheers for the aerosol spray. |
The next day, Wednesday, we took the Peru Hop bus to Paracas, about a four hour drive from Lima along the coast. Thankfully, we found a lavandería there, although not without incident. On the plus, we have clean clothes again. But Wyatt and I are both missing one sock each and I’m salty about it.
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| The lavandería that lost our socks. |
From here though, I think our hygiene should be on the up and up.
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