Cusco & Machu Pichu

I just got back from a 4-day trip with my program to Cusco, a city of about 200,000 in the mountains of northern Perú. I left my house at about 5:15am to make my flight, and when we arrived at our hotel, the first thing I did was sleep. We went to lunch at a pizza restaurant (actually, the same one we went to in Iquitos), but after I ordered my food I started to feel really, really sick. I felt dizzy, short-of-breath, really hot, and incredibly nauseous, so I sat outside on the curb with my head down and the waitress brought me coco tea (it´s tea made with leaves from the cocaine plant that helps with altitude sickness). After sleeping for the rest of the afternoon, I thought I would go to our only scheduled event of the day, an andian concert at 7pm, but as I was waiting to go, I felt incredibly sick again. A hotel employee brought me oxygen and alcohol to rub on my forehead (this is also supposed to help with altitude sickness) every hour, and I passed the time watching Flavor of Love III (which just premiered 3 weeks ago) until everyone returned at 10pm. I felt a lot better after the extensive treatments, so I tried to eat breakfast the next morning, but I threw up the tiny piece of bread I ate. A few hours later, I felt so much better and knew I could enjoy the rest of the trip.

On the afternoon of the second day, we took a bus for about 45 minutes to a rural community in the mountains to visit a bilingual school (Spanish and an indigenous language, not English). The director of the school explained that he and his wife just took over the school as a project because the Peruvian government wants to send the students from the rural communities into the city schools where they will not be able to practice their native language. We got to play with the kids, which was so much fun! They just wanted us to hold them and swing them around, but we also taught them Double Dutch beacuse they were jumping rope with only one rope. Afterwards, we went to a café the director set up so the proceeds can benefit the school. Once we returned to Cusco, I ate my first meal of the entire trip- tomato soup and pasta with pesto. Some of my friends tried more exotic dishes like alpaca and cuy (guinea pig). In the evening, we took a tour with an author from Cusco who showed us how Cusco is beautiful due to the simple Incan architecture. The tour was pretty boring, but we got to see Garcilaso de la Vega (a famous Spanish author)´s house. Afterwards, we saw the most famous church in Cusco called Santo Domingo (the Spaniard built a church on top of Incan ruins during the Colonial period), did some shopping (there are tons of craft markets in Cusco), and attended the hotel´s happy hour where I discovered my new favorite drink called Sex on Machu Pichu (it´s pineapple, mango, and banana juice with the Peruvian liquor Pisco), but I could only have one because of the altitude.

On the third day, we went to Machu Pichu! We had to wake up around 5:30 because it takes so long to travel there. We took a bus for about 2 hours, a train for another 2 hours, and a bus up a the mountain for about 20 minutes. We had a guide named Guido who didn´t tell us that much information, but you can´t enter without a guide. We took a 45 minute hike up to an area they say is like a view from a postcard. They joke that Machu Pichu becomes Many Photos and it definitely does, and I´m still concerned that I didn´t take enough photos! After the incredible view, we walked down in the ruins. Then we had some free time to just relax among the giant rocks and free-roaming llamas. It was surprisingly hot and walking in the altitude was kind of difficult, but it was such an amazing experience. My pictures don´t really do it justice, but I still did get to see one of the seven wonders of the world! That night we fell asleep pretty quickly and unfortunately had to leave Cusco early the next morning. I´d love to go back, maybe with my parents, but I´m not sure if I´m willing to suffer through altitude sickness again.