in pain. We initially thought that her malaria tablet had got lodged
in her chest... Hours and hours of painful chest compressions
followed. I though she was having a heart attack or something! We went
to hospital in the morning, pretty easy process, they tested her and
told her she was fine. With the pain diminishing, we decided to press
on.
So, our luxury 21 hour bus ride was cancelled due to protesters taking
over the roads. We had to go via Arequipa on the overnight bus
instead. It was a pretty good diversion. We jumped straight on a local
bus out to canyon del colca, for an overnight trip. They advertise
this canyon as being one of Arequipa's main attractions, you'd expect
it to be just down the road, not 5 hours on the bumpiest roads! It was
when we were up at snow level that we realised we hadn't brought warm
enough clothes with us. Even the lamas looked cold. We found some hot
springs to soak in, and early to bed, it was the warmest place to be!
Next morning we caught the 4am bus to the canyon. We almost missed it,
and were blessed with the back seats of the bus...within the first 20
mins, I knew this was going to be a rough trip. I moved to the front
of the bus. It pulled over to let someone off, I jumped off and threw
up... momento por favor... The let me sit up the front after that.
Rough rough rough. We got to the canyon lookout point. From 7-9
condors famously swoop by. We watched the swooping then jumped on a 5
hour bus back to Arequipa. Arequipa is Peru's 2nd largest
city...surrounded by desert.
We had lunch in the main square, dehydrated, ordered a massive bottle
of mineral water. Half way through, Kirsty notices that the water has
loads and LOADS of nasty sediment, dirt, green fluffy balls, she
claims she saw a red worm too. Yuck! I'd drunk about half the bottle.
They must have just filled it up out of the tap or something. We
didn't pay for lunch and the decided that the best thing to do would
be to make ourselves sick... better to get it out instead of letting
it go through our systems. So we found a nice loo and managed to vomit
our nice lunch and scummy water :( sick twice in one day :(
We then jumped on the overnight bus to Cusco - base camp for machu
picchu. We froze on the bus, it rocked up at 5am, we had McDonalds hot
cakes for breakfast, the found our hostel and crashed out.
4 terrible nights sleep in a row. Headache from being at altitude.
Found some coca leaves in the hostel, so have had lots of coca tea.
Nice to be in the one place for a while, we start out trek next
Wednesday, so we're just chilling out and will do some day trips from
here over the next few days.
Can't believe it's only been a week!! Feels like we've been away for
ages!
Sent from my iPhone
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