Battered and Bruised in Peru... again

Iquitos, Amazon Jungle, Peru

   What rotten timing! I have been in Iquitos 4 weeks and in that time I have been helping out at the Manatee centre and haven´t been doing a lot, physically speaking. So, tomorrow I am off to the jungle with work mates, and this morning me and a friend were in a ´car accident´. I put car in inverted commas because we were in a Mototaxi or MotoKar (like a Tuk-Tuk).
   It all happened so fast. Ruud (dutch friend) and I were just chatting, suddenly Ruud yells 'whoa! watch out', and then we slam into the back of a SUV. I couldn´t move at first, I had fallen forward, my right leg had slipped down and I had landed with my bum on the floor of the Tuk-tuk, one leg down and the other leg, well, I´m not sure where it went, but it has a lot of swelling and pain now.
   The police arrived amazingly fast for a country that does everything ´manaña´, and they insisted that we go to the hospital, although what we both wanted to do was sit and get to feeling right. I felt like fainting, and when I looked at Ruud there was blood and he was sweating profusely. We were sure we had nothing more than surface wounds and bruising but we agreed to go to the hospital.
   They checked us over, and all was ok, although I was insistant on some ice. The mototaxi driver had a cut over his eye and they were telling him he had to pay the emergency hospital bill for us and himself. He couldn´t afford the $2 for himself, let alone us, and so we paid our bills and his. (Yes that´s right $2! A total of $6 for the 3 of us! I won´t be needing to use my insurance). This poor man now has a police fine, and a bike to fix (although he should have been looking where he was going), and he needs this bike to make money. Although he was at fault, we knew that to pay for him was the only thing to do.
   Then we got the most comfortable ride in Iquitos, in the police car to our intended destination. And I have a 7am start tomorrow to go limping into the jungle with work mates.