Litre

So I have the Chilean version of poison ivy/poison oak, which is called Litre. It sucks, although to be fair it sucks less than the poison oak I had back in March. I seem to have been exposed to it during my ill-fated Columbus Day hike up Cerro Manquehue, a hill in Santiago. Everything about that hike was bad, and it won't go away! I thought it would be nice to do a day hike that was easily reachable by public transportation, so I went with 2 friends. It started out ok, but then it got really steep and I felt like crap. I ended up turning around before reaching the top because I had to rest every five steps and it just wasn't fun at all. Two days later I had a fever, and the following weekend (last weekend, in Mendoza) I had a spot on my arm that was oozing extreme grossness. I knew then it was from contact with a poisonous plant, but although it was gross I was relieved because it didn't itch that much and it didn't seem to be spreading. The oozing finally dried up after a week, and I thought I was in the clear, but then yesterday I broke out with an itchy pin rash over almost all of my body. Since I couldn't sleep and I didn't know if the rash was related to the hike or something new, today I went to the doctor. She confirmed that it was Litre, and prescribed me some drugs, that I hope will work as well as the steroids I got for my poison oak. So I guess now I just wait.

Apparently the allergic reaction is sensitive to the sun, which is perhaps why I broke out yesterday--on Saturday I went on another excursion to the Cajon del Maipo, this time a bike excursion. It was fun to be on a bike, and the weather was beautiful, although it was another trip where the transportation and preparation time exceeded the actual activity time. Instead of public transportation, we had a guide who met us at a metro station with the bikes and a van to take us to the cajon. But the guide was an hour late (and he wasn't even Chilean! He was an American, but he apparently had been living in Chile for too long), and then after we drove to the cajon it took at least another hour to get all the bikes ready for riding. A bit frustrating, but what can you do. Here are some pictures:

crossing the Rio Maipo

view down a tributary and across the cajon

the bus almost packed up and ready to head back to town