Some sun has got to rise

Our arrival in Arequipa marked the first time in our tour that we a a brush with the dreaded “altitude sickness” that you hear about so very often. At 2300 m above sea level there is noticeably less oxygen in the air, since everyone starting huffing and puffing after carrying our luggage up the slight incline 20 m to our hotel.  But we took it slow and allowed our bodies to acclimatize to the reduced oxygen. Arequipa still has many Spanish influences, so the city in many spots looks like you could be in the middle of Spain. Or conversely, you could also appear to be in the middle of Cuba with it’s colonial style buildings. Take your pick! The city is also adjacent to three volcanos ( only one is semi-active) meaning that Arequipa sometimes has small earthquakes. We had an extremely relaxed day, spent most of it getting used to the altitude and indulging in some happy hour chilcanos (two for 15 soles!) later that evening. 

Bright and early Thursday morning we hopped on a bus to Chevay. We made several stops along the way for Coca tea, sight seeing and to ensure we were getting used to the increasing altitude. Now I was feeling fairly cocky at this point, because I somewhat remember not being affected by the altitude whatsoever when I came to Peru at age 13. Before this trip I was worried that I have changed enough in eight years that my reaction to altitude would be much worse. After hanging around in Arequipa at 2300m I assumed that I was going to get off Scott free, but this was because I failed to take into account how another kilometer straight up might feel on my body. During our drive we stopped at the highest spot of our whole trip at 4910m. I was still being fairly cocky, taking jumping photos (even though one jump was enough to send your heart racing) and walking all around the rest stop. A few other members of our group were not so lucky and only made it out of the van long enough to take a group photo.  We arrived in Chevay (3600m)  just in time for lunch, and when everyone else started to feel better I hit a giant wall. Immediately I lost all of my energy and anything resembling an appetite. My best guess is a delayed reaction to the high altitudes. It wasn’t quite altitude sickness, but I sure felt awful. After shoveling a few meagre servings from the buffet into my mouth, I nearly fell asleep in my food. I felt really stupid for jumping around and saying how fine I felt when we were at 4910m, but hindsight is 20/20!

Luckily after lunch we had R&R time so I napped for a whole hour and a half, until it was time to go to the hot springs!  We were going to some really rustic and natural hot springs around 30 minutes away from Chevay. However just as we were in sight of the hot springs and headed down the mountain side to cross the river, our driver realized that there was no bridge, and no hot springs! It turns out that sometime within the past week there had been a flash flood that had washed away the bridge and flooded majority of the pools we had been hoping the relax in. We then did a three point turn right then and there on the mountain side. I’m not sure if you have ever sat in the back of a huge passenger van in the middle of a three point turn on the side of a mountain, with two extremely nervous passengers screaming that they want to get out, while you’re looking out the window watching the cliffs edge creep closer and closer the tires, but I would reccomend you try it at least once in your life. We headed back to Chevay safe and sound and went to the public hot spring instead.

I felt like rubbish the rest of Thursday evening, had quite possibly the worst sleep of my entire life (which is saying something because I’ve had some pretty awful sleeps) that night and unsurprisingly wasn’t feeling much better come Friday morning. We left the hotel at 6am in order to drive to the Colca Canyon to see the Condors. Our first stop along the way was to take some pictures of the farming terraces, many of which date back to Incan times. I reached into my backpack for my camera and couldn’t find it. Deciding I was still too sleep deprived and sick to function, I went out and enjoyed the views. When we got back to the bus I doubled checked, and then got my roommate to triple check and realized very quickly that I was in fact missing my camera. Through the process of elimination I figured out I must have left it in the hotel by accident and our ultra amazing tour leader phoned the hotel and confirmed that I had some how left it under the bed! Luckily we had to travel back through Chevay,  I had a minimal heart attack when I figured out it was missing and I was only separated from my camera for four hours! We saw only two condors in the end, but quite a lot of amazing scenery.

We stopped in Chevay for lunch and to pick up my Camera and proceeded to drive back to Arequipa. Upon arriving in Arequipa we all noticed how much easier it was to breath, having begun acclimatizing to 3600m, 2300 m was no problem! I spent the afternoon at the Santa Catalina monastery, which appeared to because a small town in itself, separated from the outside world by tall walls. We had crepes for dinner and then I went back to the hotel to write a blog post, while everyone else went out for happy hour again. The entrance to our room is double doors, which could only be locked by key (which I really didn’t want to do in case of emergency in the middle of the night) or chain, so we went with the latter option. I woke up in the middle of the night to someone trying to shake open our door, twice. I probably should have been more alarmed at the thought of someone trying to get into our room, but after the dreadful sleep I got the night before I was having a hard time caring enough to investigate. I wasn’t until this morning when we compared notes with everyone else that we realized we had experienced some tremors thanks to good old Misti volcano! For most on the trip this was their first earthquake.

We had a short one hour flight to Cusco this morning, where we did a quick tour of the city squares and the famous market that has anything and everything you could ever think of, before spending the rest of the afternoon relaxing. My roommate and I went to the central square to do some people watching and were approached by 11 different people in 15 minutes, all trying to sell us something. For dinner we went to a burger place and I found a burger that I love even more than the hamburgeusa double; the hamburgeusa papaso. Ingredients include bacon, an onion ring, blue cheese sauce and did I mention bacon? The burger was at least 15cm tall and looked good enough to worship. Once again, everyone else ate their burgers with a fork and knife, while I devoured mine with the ferocity of a lion who hasn’t eaten in a week. I had to use three napkins to clean the resulting mess, but I had no regrets.

Tomorrow we are driving to Ollantaytambo and spending the night before we begin Lares trek the next day. Once we complete the trek we take the train to Augas Caliente, spend the next morning at Machu Pichu and then we return to Cusco. It is highly unlikely I will have much internet access until we return to Cusco so don’t be surprised by my radio silence. Also it may take me even more days to regain control of my body after the Lares trek so who knows if a blog post will even be possible! Wish me luck!

Ciao

Alex

Ps- Despair by yeah yeah yeahs.