.. is not a Peruvian delicacy. In fact, it’s the Spanish word for altitude sickness, which hit both Kate and I pretty hard on our hiking trip. It’s probably my fault for not taking altitude medication preemptively, but I’ve never had problems before. Guess 3700m is about my limit…
In any case, we recovered a bit after sleeping for 13 hours the first day. We did about half of the hike that we planned on, which all in all was pretty impressive given that the kilometer to projectile vomit ratio was about 2 : 1. Quoth Kate: “I’m gonna ralph again.. but it’s so beautiful here! Let’s just go another 20 minutes…”
I’ll upload the pictures as soon as I get them off my camera — unfortunately it’s not as easy to find someone to copy pictures to a CD as I would like. At least I finally learned how to make the request in Spanish…
The bus ride to and from Chivay was only slightly more pleasant than soroche. The road was unpaved and extremely bumpy, and to top it all off we were subjected to hours and hours of Chicas Mañaneras Peruvian folk music videos. On the plus side, I learned how to say “Turn that shit off!” in Spanish.
Now we’re at Lake Titicaca, the world’s highest navigable lake (3800m). The altitude is treating us a bit better this time, but my extremities are still a bit tingly. Oh, what I go through for you, Peru Pain.
Tomorrow we’re going to take a boat trip to one of the islands. It should be awesome. Ciao.