The One Where I Get Attacked By A Shark

This unfortunate photo is the
only one I have of my surf/scuba
instructor. Sorry, dude!

WARNING: This post contains some... fairly graphic imagery. Not a lot, but enough to merit a warning. And not like geometry graphic, but shark attack graphic.

Note: While I encourage you to read this intro part to get a feel for the scene, if you just want to skip down to the good stuff, scroll down to the header "[THE GOOD STUFF]" below.

Today is my last day in the Galapagos, so I wanted to do something special. My scuba instructor from yesterday, CD, also happens to be a surf instructor so I made plans with him to do a surfing lesson today. RS and AS, the very friendly Mexican couple who I met diving yesterday are also joining us. I headed out to the pier at 9 o'clock this morning to meet up with him. He's a super chill guy and looks sort of exactly like you expect him to: tall, lanky, ripped, beard, typical surfer vibe. We took a water taxi for a couple minutes over to another part of the island to pick up RS and AS and then headed over to my favorite beach, Tortuga Bay.

It's about a 20-minute boat ride to Tortuga Bay, which is crazy because the last time I went there I walked and it definitely did not feel that far. I guess when you have to go along the coastline it's a little different then when you can walk in a straight line there. The beach is split into two parts: the calm, lagoon side where boats can dock (and where I went snorkeling last time), and the rough, wave-filled part where surfers hang out. For obvious reasons, we docked on the calm side. There's an awesome cactus garden that separates the two sides of the beach and greets you as you dock.

Definitely do NOT hug the trees

I also ran across this little guy posing for the camera:

Don't hate me 'cause
I'm (blue footed) boobyful

After docking, there's about a 15-minute walk to get across to the other side of the beach to go surfing. One of the things I love about this beach is that it has the finest sand I've ever seen in my life. It's like walking on powdered sugar and it feels amazing. It also makes it a little more difficult to walk because you sink in so much. It a pretty novel experience. I would recommend to anyone that if you're going to go to the Galapagos, you have to check out this beach.

Beach? Yes. Putting green? No.

Along the way, we passed by these yellow flags every few meters along the edge of the beach. My instructor explained to me that each flag marks a turtle nest! Researchers come out each morning to mark them and they take 52 days for the eggs to hatch. Crazy. What a sweet job. Science is awesome.

We got to the other end of the beach where people go surfing but the place to rent boards was locked up, so my instructor went out in search of the dude with the keys. RS, AS, and I hung out near the water just killing time. Each passing minute made me less and less hopeful that we were actually going to be able to surf today. We waited for about 20 minutes and just when I was about to give up, my instructor came walking back with surf boards!

It was the RS and AS's first time surfing, which was fine by me because it pretty much felt like my first time anyway (even though this was actually my fourth). I grabbed my board, put on my leash, and headed out into the water with everyone else. This beach is the perfect place to learn how to surf: plenty of waves, but none that are too crazy. There's a very gradual decline in the grade (i.e., the height) of the sand, which means you can be pretty far away from the shoreline and still be in relatively shallow water. In the shallower waters the waves are a lot more manageable and farther out there are bigger waves for the more advanced surfers. This is the first time I've ever had a non-private surf lesson, but I didn't really mind. I was happy to just be out there with a board practicing the basics like balancing on my board and paddling. I was still getting a little bit of instruction, which actually really helped. My biggest problem right now is getting my back foot planted when I pop up on the board, but I guess that comes with practice.

[THE GOOD STUFF]

After an hour of being in the water I finally found a good wave, paddled out like crazy and mounted my board. I was actually riding a wave! On my own! This is awesome. It lasted a good... three seconds before I could start to feel the wave dying out from under me. Just as I was feeling that happen, I saw this huge black shadow in front of me and to the left; it was moving perpendicular to the direction of my surf board, heading toward the exact spot where I was about to be. I thought to myself, "ok, that looks kind of like a shark." But here's the thing: I've been to this beach before and last time I was here I saw a baby black-tipped reef shark swimming in ankle-deep water. From what I had heard, these sharks are really docile and don't mess around with people. So even if it was a shark, I wasn't really that worried about it.

Black-tipped reef shark; Photo:
http://www.sealifeweymouth.com/explore/our-creatures/blacktip-reef-shark.aspx

A split second later, I wiped out, sending my board flying out in front of me as a half-jumped half-felloff the back. The water level here was about waist-deep so I immediately tried to stand up, but as I landed in the water, I felt something beating against my leg really hard. Like... realllllly hard. It sort of felt like what I imagine a tail fin would feel like as a big fish swims by you. I wasn't sure what was happening but then my leg started killing me. My first thought was I must have hit it with my board, which has definitely happened many times before since I'm a total noob at surfing. But then I thought about it a little more and realized that my board went flying in front of me, so that couldn't possibly have been it. I grabbed my leg and pulled it into my body for about five seconds because the pain was so bad, fully expecting the initial pain to subside, but finding that it only continued to get worse.

I finally got control of my board and used it to help me raise my leg out of the water and that's when I saw one of those things you never really want to see on yourself or anyone else. There was a big slice through my left calf and what was underneath wasn't skin, it was a white color. And blood. Seeping out from many, many, many places along the inner side of my left leg. ...this doesn't look good. Above my knee I could see a row of puncture wounds that clearly corresponded to a row of teeth. I didn't want to yell out for help... for some reason I still don't fully understand, so I just waved my arms trying to capture my instructor's attention, then beckoning him over when he noticed me a couple seconds later. I showed him my leg and CD immediately yelled at the two other students to get out of the water right now (in Spanish, obviously; this whole day takes place in Spanish). I started walking out toward the shore and he was like, "get on the board." I protested mildly, telling him that it's okay, I can walk back, to which he responded more firmly for me to get on the board. I acquiesced and flopped my way onto my surfboard, after which he pushed me the remaining 15 meters or so back to shore.

Back on the beach, CD and RS carried me, still on top of the board, a little more inland away from the waves. Immediately, a few other people who happened to be on the beach came over to help us. This was all a little bit of a blur for me. One of the guys that came over called for a boat to take us back to the main port. During that time, they got some bottled water and poured it on my leg. There were four very clear bites with about five teeth each. They started with the worst a few inches below my knee on my inner calf, and then got progressively lighter until a few inches above my knee. CD used his white t-shirt to cover my leg and protect it. I don't know if you've ever put cloth (or... anything) on an open wound before but let me tell you, it is NOT pleasant. But it was probably for the better, given how much sand was potentially flying around.

Looks like I'm just sitting on a surf board, right? While that's technically
true, all the fun stuff happened from the point of view you can't see
here. Just you wait, it's coming further below. Promise.

SCIENCE!

At this point, my leg was hurting. Not like crazy, but hurting. The salt water wasn't doing me any favors either. While sitting there on the surfboard, I remembered a wonderful thing. See, for most of this trip, I've been carrying around a few choice "just in case" items in my little travel daypack (like a whistle, for example). The vast majority of these items I've never had to use. But I remember that one of those items happened to be New Skin Liquid Bandage, a truly miraculous substance that you brush onto things like cuts and it acts as both an antiseptic and then hardens to form a protective seal, replacing the need for a band-aid. Amazing. It's in these times that Present Me is so thankful that Past Me had enough foresight to have Future Me's back.

I wasn't really thinking about the whole hardening part, just the antiseptic part, so I told the people I was with about it and someone went to retrieve the vial from inside of my backpack. He then poured it over my bigger wounds and used the little brush to gently brush it around. And, well, have you ever put hydrogen peroxide on a cut? Ok so imagine that. Except instead of hydrogen peroxide, think crazy strong hydrogen peroxide. And instead of a cut, think massive holes in your leg due to shark bite. That's what this was like. In fact... that's exactly what this was. OUCH. But honestly, probably for the better. Who knows what crazy kind of bacteria were living in that shark's mouth? I bet it didn't even brush that morning. Lazy shark.

You've been forewarned: here are some close-ups of the other side of my leg that you didn't see above:

After laying there for a few minutes, we got word that there was a boat coming to take me, so four guys spread out to opposite ends of the surf board and carried me Cleopatra-style down the beach, with AS carrying my daypack alongside us. Remember how I said it was a 15 minute walk to get here? Well they had to make that same 15-minute walk back. But, you know, when you're carrying a dude on a surfboard, it takes a little more than 15 minutes. And remember how I said that the sand here was like walking on powdered sugar? Turns out that makes it super hard to carry a dude on a surfboard down the beach too. I was so impressed. Before they started carrying me, I honestly at first was thinking, "hey, if one of you just wants to get on my left side to support me, we can walk down there." In retrospect, that probably would have been a terrible idea, but I didn't really feel like I was in so much pain that I couldn't walk. The guys had to rest every couple of minutes but to be honest, I was impressed at how little they actually did rest. Eventually they found a giant log and put it under the surfboard and used that to carry me, which was a little easier for them, but I can't imagine that much easier.

As an aside, despite the searingly painful, blood gushing, potentially-life-threatening terrifyingness of the situation, I was in surprisingly good spirits the whole time. I was talking pretty calmly to everyone. In Spanish, no less. Trust me, I'm as surprised as you. But like... this is such a ridiculous thing to happen and it's no one's fault, so how can you even be mad about it? Screaming out in pain or being angry or scared wasn't going to help the situation. It wasn't going to get me down the beach faster. It wasn't going to make that ambulance get there any quicker. It wasn't going to make me any lighter for the incredibly generous dudes carrying me down the beach. So why not laugh about it? I was cracking jokes with the guys and everyone was doing okay, as far as I could tell. My instructor was making fun of me for being so heavy that they had to keep stopping. I asked him if he wanted to switch places for a little bit. No big deal. Part of me wonders if the meditation retreat from back in October had anything to do with it, or if I would have just been this way anyway. I guess we'll never know.

We eventually made it back to the calm part of the beach where we first docked. There were a lot of tourists there and everyone was staring, obviously. People were taking photos. It was kind of funny. A few minutes later, the boat arrived to take us to the main harbor and a few people lifted the entire surfboard onto it. I said goodbye to RS and AS, thanked them for their help, and apologized for ruining their surfing afternoon. They couldn't have been more wonderful about the whole thing.

My instructor and one other guy hopped on board and we were off! The ocean was relatively calm, but I could feel every tiny wave we passed. To be honest, I was probably way more amused by the whole thing than I really should have been, but... come on, who gets bit by a shark?! Honestly. This photo was taken from the boat on the way to the main harbor:

As we were pulling up to the dock my instructor started chuckling. I asked him what he was laughing at and he responded, "... there are a lot of people here." Ha! We pulled into the dock. I couldn't really see much because I was lying down in the boat, but as we arrived, I could see a whole swarm of people peering in to see what had happened and I saw the ambulance waiting at the dock. We docked and a couple medics boarded with a stretcher. They set it down next to the surfboard and move me over onto it. Then they lifted the stretcher out of the boat and onto the dock, which was terrifying in and of itself because as they lifted me, I wasn't totally confident they weren't going to drop me into the water. But it turned out okay. They got me into an ambulance. Everyone was taking photos. Even people in uniform looking very official were taking photos.

My instructor hopped into the ambulance too and we took a quick two-minute ride over to the hospital. On the way, a doctor asked me a few questions about what had happened. We arrived at the hospital and they took me right into a room and laid me on a bed, still on this hard plastic stretcher. Then a bunch of people came in to look at the thing. One guy who turned out to be the doctor who was going to take care of me finally took my info, name nationality, etc. and then explained to me what was going to happen. Except it was in Spanish and my medical vocabulary isn't stellar. Puntos? What are puntos? He finally was able to charades it up enough to help me understand that he was talking about stitches. They were going to clean me up and then stitch me up. Cool, sounds about right.

Remember that liquid bandage stuff we poured on my leg? Yea, turns out that doing that was a TERRIBLE idea (I dunno, maybe it wasn't, maybe it staved off infection, but who knows?) because they had to remove it before they could do anything else. And the whole point of it is that it's a band-aid, so it... sticks to you. That was for sure one of the most painful parts of this entire ordeal because it felt like they were pulling open all of my wounds again. After excruciatingly removing the liquid bandage, a nurse shaved around my cuts and then the doctor came back to start the suturing. He started with the worst bite first.

CHOMP CHOMP

He injected me with some lidocaine, a local anesthetic. I can't really remember if or when I've ever had something like that but I was surprised as how effective it was. I could feel the poking and prodding, but i only felt the pain in the areas that weren't drugged up. Which was still pretty painful. After he finished on the first bite, he moved onto the second one, again with lidocaine beforehand. On the third one he decided not to use lidocaine and that thing hurt worst than anything so far. After doing just one stitch I told him that I couldn't feel my arms (which was true and was totally weirding me out) he was like, "...i'm going to give you some more lidocaine." THANK YOU. Also... seriously?! Did you not think it was a good idea to start with the anesthetic on my animal bite? He finished up with the stitches after about an hour or so. They only other time I've had stitches was when I fell down the stairs as a little kid and split my lip open. I was too young to remember any of it. So I really had no idea if this guy was doing a good job or not. The rest of the hospital staff didn't seem to care too much, given their propensity for taking photos. But one of them assured me as she assisted the doctor who was suturing that was doing "like a cosmetic surgery" on my leg. Meaning that the technique he was using was meant to minimize the scarring. (When I got my stitches out a couple weeks later, I found out from that nurse that this was indeed true. Thanks, doc!). There was a fourth bite higher up on my leg, but the doctor said it was too light to need stitches. I reluctantly agreed with him. At the time, he counted 45 stitches but when I got them out a few weeks later, we counted 42.

When he was finished, they wrapped up my leg and told me to go back to the hotel, take a shower, and come back so they could rewrap my leg because it can't get wet. Luckily my hotel was very close by because everything is very close by.

My surf instructor has been waiting out in the waiting room the whole time, which must have been about two or three hours. He came back in with my daypack, which thankfully he had been carting around this whole time. Still shirtless because his shirt was soaked my my blood. He told me that earlier he had to go across the street and took some cash from my wallet to buy the razors and bandages the nurses needed for my leg. Welcome to medical care on the islands!

Here's what I looked like all stitched up:

I got down from the bed and very gingerly started to walk. No wheelchair was there for me. My surf instructor was like "come on guys!" and so they brought me one. Then they wheeled me about 3 meters to the exit of the hospital and that was as far as that wheelchair ride went. I could actually walk just fine, I just couldn't bend my leg for fear of my stitches coming out.

I would be remiss if I didn't give a very heartfelt thank you to all of the hospital staff. For as much grief as I've given them thus far, the truth of the matter is that without them, who knows what would have happened to my leg, and for that I'm very, very grateful. 

My instructor had been waiting for me the whole time, like two or three hours, and he went with me back to my hotel. He also had gotten me some Gatorade and food. What a champ. When we got outside of the hospital, his girlfriend (who was the other scuba instructor from yesterday) was there. And she brought food for me! Amazing. We hopped in a taxi and we drove the one minute to my hotel. The two of them helped me up the stairs to my room. When we got there, the woman at the counter was like, "what happened?" and I said, "shark" and she was like ".....seriously???" Up in my room, they left me with my food and said they'd come by later. Of course, being me, I just had logistics on my mind. I needed to get my dive log signed so I asked him to sign it from yesterday. He said he would take it, stamp it, and bring it back later so that he could also collect the tupperware.

After they left, I very carefully got into the shower and got all the sand off me. That was maybe one of the most painful showers of my life. I then very carefully dressed because I didn't want to mess up my clothes. You know, with my own blood. That was leaking from my body.

SO thoughtful. So delicious.

I was STARVING at this point and so glad to have that food and it was SO good. I ate then got ready and headed out the door. Downstairs, I asked them to call me a taxi. Then the WHOLE FAMILY running this place, like... a dozen of them were crowded around me asking me questions about what had happened. The taxi came and took me back to the hospital. I waited for just a few minutes, and then they took me in and rewrapped my leg.

Waiting outside of the hospital
for my leg to get re-wrapped

As I was sitting on the same hospital bed as before, I was wondering why the bed felt wet and I figured they must have just put a new paper sheet over it, so it was probably still wet from when I was there before in my soaking board shorts. Nope, turns out the Gatorade bottle I had in my backpack wasn't properly closed so it was very slowly leaking out. Onto everything in my backpack. Onto me. Only my clothes, Onto that bed. Onto the floor. Great.

I got out of the hospital about 15 minutes later, having received an injection in my lower back for the pain. I headed to a pharmacy across the street to pick up the antibiotic and the painkiller the doc prescribed to me. I then decided I wanted ice cream. So I got ice cream from the little shop down the street. It turns out they didn't have chocolate, just vanilla. Worst. But still ice cream. Today is just not my day.

Getting wrapped

The doctor was very explicit that I needed to take it easy. So any rational human being with an ounce of common sense would have gone straight back to the hotel immediately following their shark attack. The thing is... common sense is not something I brought much of with me on this trip. I had put off getting gifts for my family the whole three-ish weeks I was here and I couldn't very well return home without getting them something from the Galapagos, right? (They would be mortified to know this was true, so I haven't told them this, until now I guess). So instead of heading back to my hotel, I decided to take the five-minute walk down the street to where the stores were. Well, what is normally five minutes. In my current condition, it was more like 15. Of course, I couldn't just get what I found at the first store. I was looking for a very particular shirt for myself. What was this shirt, you ask? It was four Galapagos animals crossing the street a la the Beatles' Abbey Road cover. Obviously. So I went to another shop. And another. And another. About an hour later I finally found everything I needed, so this time I was smart enough to take a taxi back to the hotel.

I survived a shark attack and all I got was this lousy shirt

When I got into the lobby, the woman there told me that the minister of tourism for the island had called looking for me. What?! So she called him back for me and told me that he was on his way here. I was in no rush to be anywhere, so I waited down in the lobby. About 10 minutes later, the dude showed up and introduced himself. He just wanted to make sure everything was okay and to see if I needed anything, I told him I was going to the airport tomorrow and he said he would arrange for my ride in the morning. Amazing! We chatted for a few minutes and then he was on his way. 

After that very sweet woman at the reception came and chatted with me and asked me all about what had happened. She said if there was anything at all that I needed, to just let her know. She was so sympathetic.

About 20 minutes later and much to my surprise, the Mexican couple that was with us earlier walked through the door! They found out where I was staying and came to check on me. Amazing. We chatted for a while and debriefed. They're so cool. The dude showed me some pictures he took of me and was going to send me (one of which is in this post). They invited me to come visit them anytime I'm in Mexico city. We said our goodbyes and they were on their way.

'Tis but a scratch

Later in the evening, a researcher for the Galapagos National Parks who specializes in sharks came by the hotel. He has heard about my shark attack and wanted to ask me a few questions about it, which I was very happy to do. They want to get as much data on this stuff as possible. We sat in a little lobby area and then moved to my hotel room so I could pull up the photos from earlier in the day. He was super nice and asked me to share my photos with him, which I told him I would send to him. I showed him some of the photos and he explained a little more clearly what probably happened. Based on the size of my bites, he said the shark was probably about 1.5 meters in length. This whole time, I was thinking it was the worst bites first, then progressively lighter, but he explained it was probably the other way around. The first two were probably not actually bits, but instead the shark ramming into me with his mouth. Their teeth are super sharp, so it left what looks like bite marks. As the shark got more scared and frustrated, it started to bite, first a light one, then a harder one, before it finally found its way around my leg. I'm assuming that beating against my leg I mentioned earlier was probably the shark's incredibly powerful tail fin smacking me as it swam past.

What a crazy day. I packed up my room a bit and worked on the blog to document all of this before heading to bed. I need to go to the hospital tomorrow morning before my flight so they can re-rewrap my bandage again. I can get my stitches out in eight days.

I'm so happy to be alive.

And Then I Went To The Hospital

Everything was wonderful until I decided to head down to the lounge to hang out. It was still raining a little bit and the ground was wet. As I was coming down the stairs from my room, I slipped and fell. For a second, it didn't seem that bad, I only fell down a few stairs, and I fell backward onto my back so I didn't hit my head or anything. But then I felt this awful pain in my right shoulder. I stayed down for a few seconds but the ground was wet, so I wanted to get up, but when I did, I could barely lift my arm. I was very clearly in pain and as I looked across the courtyard I saw one of the staff there just laughing at me. Seriously?! A few seconds later, his boss asked him what happened and he told her I fell and I could hear her from across the courtyard say "oh my God!" and rushed over to help me up. After which the dude sort of realized how much of douche he was being and followed suit.

They helped me over into the lounge. A few other staff members came over and all of a sudden, everything thought they were doctors and were all telling me different things to do. In retrospect, I should have realized that I'm in India, no one knows what they're doing, and I should just go back to my room. But I was in a lot of pain and at they mercy of their instructions. Which were to continue to swing my arm around to relax my shoulder (which, again in retrospect, was probably the worst thing I could have done). Then one of the guys came and tried to stretch my arm out. They offered to take me to a hospital but I was like "uhh... I think I'll pass." At one point they were like "oh, it's not a big deal. It's probably because this is just the first time you've fallen. We've all fallen on those stairs many times." To which I'm thinking 1) obviously, this isn't the first time I've ever fallen, that's a ridiculous thing to say but it also has no bearing on how much my shoulder should hurt, and 2) ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! If you've all fallen multiple times on those stairs, WHY DON'T YOU FIX THE PROBLEM???

I went back up to my room and a few minutes later, one of the staff members came with some terrible-smelling green liquid in a little bowl and said this was a local remedy for sore muscles, so he came in and rubbed it on my shoulder.

This hallway is the entirety of the
hospital, as far as I could tell

After an hour my shoulder was still killing me, and I figured I probably should get this checked out. Better safe than sorry, right? So I went back down to the lounge and said yes, I did indeed want to go to a hospital. They called around for a cab, but it's still Onam (because it's always a holiday of some sort in India) so there weren't any cabs available. Their solution: send me to the hospital on the back of a motorcycle driven by one of their staff. We didn't really have another option, so I went with it. The lucky staff member was JA, a skinny 17-year-old. With a motorcycle.

So we went outside. It was still raining. And night time at this point. I hopped on the back of his motorcycle. Didn't have a helmet. And couldn't really hold onto him all that well because... well, my shoulder felt like it was going to fall off. And as we were speeding toward the hospital along a dirt road going waaaaay faster than we should have even if it weren't raining / it weren't pitch black out with no streetlights / it weren't a dirt road / I didn't have a busted shoulder / we were wearing helmets, I thought to myself, "well, I guess I had a good run."

My state-of-the-art (in 1970) X-ray machine

Miraculously, we made it to the hospital in one piece. Luckily, JA was there because I couldn't have navigated the hospital scene without him. He came in with me, talked to the right people, and a minute later, I was filling out the shortest intake form I've ever filled out. A few minutes later, they took me in and did the standard height, weight, and blood pressure measurements. A few minutes later, I sat down with the doctor, a woman probably in her 60s. She wasn't all that talkative and just asked me a few straightforward questions about what happened, etc. After she was satisfied, she didn't say anything to me, just sent me back out into the hallway. Every staff member there I interacted either gave no expression when looking at me, or gave a little chuckle at the helplessness of this Westerner in their hospital. After a couple minutes I went into a room with a huge X-ray machine. So... it turns out this was the next step. An X-ray technician laid me down on the table and took some X-rays of my shoulder. No protective gear for me of course, so hopefully I'll still be able to have children, but who knows. Luckily, the X-ray was positioned pretty closely to my shoulder, so I think the radiation was localized.

You could definitely go
off-roading in this puppy

While we were waiting for the doctor to take a look at the results, I saw a woman in the most amazing wheelchair I've ever seen in my life. It's literally made out of a plastic lawn chair, a steel frame, and some bike tires! There was a sticker on the back for Free Wheelchair Mission, a nonprofit whose goal is to provide "wheelchairs for the impoverished disabled in developing countries." Amazing.

We waited for another 10 minutes, and then we went back to the doctor. I laughed as I walked in and told her that in the U.S. this would have taken days. She seemed to find that mildly amusing, and I think she also took some sense of pride in it too. Or some sense of judgement about the healthcare system in America. She told me the X-ray looked fine and that nothing was broken. I could have told her that! I figured I either tore or dislocated something, but that didn't seem to be on her mind. Her next question was "do you want a shot for the pain?" Are you kidding me? Poked by a needle of any kind in India? No thanks, doc. I have absolutely zero problems with getting shots. But it's definitely not happening in India. I don't care if I'm at a hospital. She laughed at me when I said no because I'm pretty sure in her head I was a wimpy American afraid of needles, and I was fine letting her continue to think that. She prescribed me some medicines, which she scratched out on a piece of paper, written in Malayalam, which I obviously couldn't read. She asked me one more time, "are you sure you don't want a shot?" to which I again replied "no." I think she just wanted to laugh at me one more time before sending me out of the room.

JA took care of giving the "prescription" to a woman at the counter, who gave me three medicines and explained to him how much of each I was supposed to take, which he relayed to me. He also took care of the bill, which was all inclusive a whopping ~$15. Start to finish, we were probably there about 30 minutes. I asked JA to get my X-rays. What better memento of my visit to a hospital in India than my own X-rays? Of course, this is where the blindingly quick experience got tangled up in the backward bureaucracy inherent in all things India. We waited probably another 20-30 minutes before someone gave them to us. Nevertheless, we got them! I tucked them away under my shirt and mentally prepared myself for the equally if not more treacherous motorcycle ride back to the hotel. Still raining. Still dark. Still no helmets or paved roads.

We got back, I went to the lounge to update the staff on the verdict. Literally every single time the rest of the evening when I went back up to my room at least one staff member would say, "please be careful, sir!" Which was fine at first, but quickly became pretty patronizing. There were also some not-so-subtle suggestions from FA that I must have fallen because I wasn't being careful. No, FA, I fell because your stairs are made out of material that has zero traction on it. Boeing should coat 747s in that stuff so that they can fly faster.

I didn't stay in my room for too long because the internet there was spotty, so I headed back down to the lounge to figure out exactly what drugs the doctor had given me. Luckily, the packaging for each one had either the brand name or chemical name on it, which was a good place to start. The doctor had given me a few things for pain and also... something for an upset stomach? Really? Maybe she just figured I'm a foreigner so obviously my stomach is going haywire. Well played, doctor. She also gave me something that on my first pass of researching initially had me thinking it was a mild form of LSD that was unregulated by the FDA and could potentially get me arrested if I tried to bring it back into the U.S. and I was like "whoa, okay, maybe I'll be skipping this one." On my second try at googling it, I came to the conclusion that it's not what I thought, just a mild pain killer. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

While I was in the lounge, I talked to FA about arranging for me to go see some elephants. She laid out a few pamphlets to look over and I selected the package I wanted. FA made some calls and it turns out that the trekking option I wanted to do wasn't available because it was only me going and the tour company didn't want to hassle with all of the costs associated for just one person. Which I get, but... come on! I came thousands of miles for this! FA was pushing some other options and we talked for a bit about what I really wanted to do, and then she went away for a while and came back with a new idea. She pulled together her own itinerary of things to do for the day that included elephants, as well as seeing some other parts of Thekkady, waterfalls, views, a tea plantation, and a trip into the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu. Seemed cool, a little on the pricier side, but it sounded like a great day so I went for it. This is really happening! I'm going to see elephants!

While I was down in the lounge, I ordered dinner. It turns out JA is not only the resident motorcyclist, he's also the resident chef. So he asked me what I wanted, and disappeared into the kitchen. Food came out pretty quickly and it was amazing (if not super spicy). I ate outside in the courtyard. Which, my earlier accident aside, is beautiful. After dinner, I asked for dessert. They asked me what I wanted, so I said ice cream. They said yes and went away. I waited for a while, maybe 10-15 minutes. At this point, I kind of didn't care anymore, I just wanted to go back up to my room. I was wondering why it was taking so long and then I heard the motorcycle pull up to the hotel and I realized what had happened. It turned out they ran out of ice cream, so they sent one of the guys into town to get me some! They're definitely going above and beyond to make sure I have a good stay. I imagine the fall I took is all the more reason for them to bend over backward to make sure I give them a good review.

I called it a night after that and went to bed. I really hope this shoulder thing doesn't ruin the rest of my trip.

CONTINUE ON to Thekkady Part 3: Remba the ELEPHANT