7th of May - still London

I'm inside bus 171 towards Peckham. Transporting oneself, a full backpack and a three-person tent at peak hour from Hammersmith to south London is something that should be avoided at all costs.

London reminds me of a tumour. An expanding dirty little tumour aggressively reaching out to the countryside. As I stood in the platform at Oxford Street station, the epicentre of this malignancy, I could taste the hypoxia. These electrified tube lines, these congested roads, these overpopulated pavements, they are the blood vessels sequestered to keep the tumour alive.

I'm inside bus 171, surrounded by the pale faces of the undead, looking at the metal-coloured sky and wondering how many of these people have tumours growing in them right now, when a voice grabs my attention.

"Are you goin' campin' mate?"

I was miles away.

"Are you goin' campin'?" she repeated.

Oh yes, the tent. I nodded. You don't expect this kind of interactions in a London bus.

"Where'bouts?"

"In Cuba." I answered promptly.

"Oh...".

I left the bus in Peckham where Rui was waiting. He cooked salmon for dinner and later told me about his own car-accident story, the increasingly famous story of the "mattress man". He had bought new shorts.

The plan was that both of us would wake up at 1 am and go pick up Rocha and Joana (or simply the Rochas according to Rui) from Victoria station. When the moment arrived I had fallen into deep sleep in Rui's living room and chickened out letting him do the job alone. For this, I was proportionately mocked by the three of them when on their arrival at about 3 am. The gang was finally together, albeit sleepy. While Rui slept in his room, Rocha, Joana and I shared the living room mattress for a few hours before waking up again at 6. It was time to start moving.