The superstitious among us might feel that doing the 13th edition while dealing with a nail biting landing at a perilous, mountain-ringed airport, is tempting fate. As it turned out there were no problems landing in Cusco, just a bumpy one hour ride and vaguely unstable contact with the runway. But later on…

But earlier…my Uber ride to get to the Lima airport was a good one. The driver, whose features were very much like the ceramic head from last letter, was excellent to talk with. He spoke slowly (well, slower than Chileans anyway) and patiently rephrased questions when I gave the rabbit in the headlights look, which wasn’t all that often. I asked him if his forebears were Spanish, and he proudly said no! Peruvian! That explained his strong features, brown skin and black hair. Later when we were exchanging ages, as you do, it turned out that he was 64. I was amazed…I would have said 40. So I made my astonishment known by saying ‘La sangre de Atahualpa te mantiene joven!’ = ‘the blood of Atahualpa keeps you young’. He laughed uproariously.

Atahualpa was the king of the Incas who ruled Peru and surrounding areas until the Spaniards arrived and changed everything. Pizarro, the head of the conquistadores kidnapped the king, promising to set him free if he produced heaps of silver and gold, which he did, but then he, Pizarro, was convinced by others in his ‘team’ that they couldn’t let him go because he would rouse the thousands of warriors against them. So they had a sham trial, the priest in the group condemning the king to death on trumped up charges, but allowing him to be garrotted rather than burnt if he would become a Christian. He did and they did.

The Airbnb place here in Cusco is simple, but very clean, and looks out over one part of the city…

The flash is fireworks.

The main part of the city is flattish, but where I am is on the surrounding hills and requires a seriously steep climb getting up.

You may have noticed that I have started spelling the name of the town with an s, rather than a z. It seems that in the Peruvian language of the district, there is no z sound, so the mayor a few years back decreed that the spelling should be changed. The z was there because the Spaniards were the ones who did the naming, using local names, but writing them in Latin letters. I am a bit confused though because z and s in Spanish in South America have the same sound (why have both is a question for another time…maybe they were different in the past…) the point seems a bit pedantic.

The spelling of the name does have a bearing on the clothes that I brought for my short stay here. It seems that there is another town, further up in the Andes, also called Cuzco, but with a z. The weather app that I use recognises this, and so has been telling me that the max temps were going to be 10 this week, whereas in Cusco low 20s.

Cusco is 3.5 km above sea level, and one would expect it to be freezing, but no. The days are warm and the sun pretty intense.

Now for the disaster…

When I arrived it was mid afternoon on Tuesday, so I walked for a long time around the place, exploring the squares, the winding narrow lanes, but strangely got massively wearier as time went on. After a couple of hours my legs became leaden, I was gasping for breath, and I had developed a brain shattering headache. Yep…the dreaded altitude sickness had struck, even though my aerobic capacity must have been reasonable after the 7 flights of stairs that I strode up several times a day for 5 weeks in Santiago. So, a tour of the big archaeological sites that I had booked into for the next day, Wednesday, was not for me. The bright sun was murder.

Later that day, fed up with feeling sorry for myself, I took a walk down the steep streets to the Plaza de Armas. It was quite warm, the air cool, no breeze, and no real throngs of tourists that clog the linear pathways. I stopped for a coffee in a little place, run by a charming woman who sold me a latte (called a cafe con leche here) for around $2.50, which seems to be the going rate in run of the mill joints. It was splendid.

Once at the Plaza I watched for a while, as my head pounded out a rhythm on a drum, took a pic of the cathedral…

and started the trek back, passing some Inca period foundation stones…

The fit is amazing. There are YouTube videos that analyse them.

I got halfway up the slope, remembering how I used to stride up similarly precipitous paths in Valparaiso, but here had to stop to have a breather, gasping for oxygen, swaying as though drunk, and thoroughly shamed by a century old biddy with a load on her back, skipping over the cobbles with nary a wheeze. I spent the rest of the day on a bed of pain.

Later, after researching on the internet, I discovered that there was a medication which would ease the pain and aid the recovery. It’s called Soroche Pills. Soroche is the Peruvian word for altitude sickness. So I headed for the nearest pharmacy, explained my situation as best I could, and got the pills, here shown using Bolivian local word for the condition.

Checking the ingredients we see

1) aspirin,

2) Acetaminosalol (Wikipedia tells me that it is a combination of aspirin and paracetamol) and

3) caffeine.

It reminds me of the analgesic from 50 years ago…the Vincent’s APC or even BEX. So I paid $28 for something that promised really to lessen the headache.

The next day, Thursday, the pain was much less (see, BEX does make it better) but still the fatigue was there at least in the morning. Apparently there are coca leaves are on sale in markets, chewed for their stamina enrichment, and for dealing with Soroche, but I didn’t go there, preferring decades old products from laboratories to centuries old remedies from the wisdom of the locals. Hmm

The streets in the historical centre are narrow, and just one car wide…

…with lots of handicrafty shops, mostly selling the same thing…jewellery, ponchos, shawls, hats, stuff.

It’s all very tidy and well maintained, and according to one shop guy I spoke to, there is always good business happening. Tourism is the major industry here.

I did venture out at lunch time on Thursday, not so much worrying about the trip down as the return, to the Plaza de Armas. It was 10 minute downhill stroll, and I found a hip sort of restaurant, and had this…

a beautiful slice of trout with creamy caper sauce and Peruvian (this is where potatoes were first cultivated by the Incas) potatoes. Despite the fairly loud music and a waitress who hadn’t got onto the smiling unit of How to be a Waiter 101 yet, I really did enjoy the food. It was a pretty cool place, so maybe smiles were extra.

And the walk back, fortified by the first food I’d eaten for a day and a half, was ok: I was still doing a passable imitation of a steam train when I got there, but I didn’t even feel like stopping on the way. I suspect that my body has acclimatised. Hooray.

Next time I come to South America the plan has fantasised that I’ll give Chile the flick, find a school to extend the Spanish learning in Lima, and come to Cusco for a week or maybe just find a school in Cusco. There’s tons to see, excursions to excurse and food to enjoy.

Later in the afternoon I went to a barbershop to get the unruly locks shorn so as to look a little less like a bush pig in a fit. The chatty chica did a fine job, trimmed any errant hairs and shortened the beard all for $12.

The food, the accommodation, the haircuts are all affordable here. What’s there not to like, apart from the lack of oxygen!

So…Friday morning, the 13th, I get the flight back to Lima, stay a few days, fly back to Santiago de Chile and on to Australia, arriving home on the late train on Friday 20th.

I might rejoin the human race by Sunday…

Hasta luego a todos

T