We made it out of Huacachina alive, though, surviving a tough hour’s slog up the sand dune directly behind our hotel to watch the sunset, as well as a bad lunch in a restaurant down the street that featured not only a fly in my coffee but also hairs on Sal’s straw and in my burger. Oh and the small matter of the taxi ride back to the bus station in the company of a driver who gleefully informed us half way there that he’d been drinking all day. It made for a scary final five minutes of the journey, although he didn’t seem to be significantly more dangerous than some of the sober drivers we’ve had so far…
After a night of knee crushing agony squeezed into my tiny seat (realising that being tall in South America isn’t necessarily a good thing) we arrived in Arequipa, Peru’s second city, and, at 2300 metres, our first baby steps towards altitude. Being a sensible type, Sal had already started taking Diamox, the anti-altitude sickness drug, but I’d foolishly chosen to hold off till Cusco. Perhaps it was indeed the altitude, or perhaps the after effects of the all night bus journey, but I found myself feeling decidedly woozy, and within a few hours had managed to spill an entire beer over myself at a bar overlooking the Plaza de Armas, and hit my head on a low bar on my way out of a restaurant so hard that it started bleeding. And of course, as we left said restaurant, with me still smelling of beer and clutching a small, thin Peruvian napkin to my head to stem the flow, we proceeded to bump into everyone we’d met so far on our travels, who all just happened to be walking down that exact street at that exact time…
Even then, I still didn’t start on the Diamox. Not until a few days later when we went off to the Colca Canyon (home to llamas, alpacas, the endangered Vicuñas, and many Condors). On the way there we reached a high point at over 4000 metres, and it really hit me, leaving me feeling sick and faint and having to have a sit down while Sal ran around with the camera taking photos.
The pain was compounded shortly afterwards when we went for lunch with the rest of our tour group, a group that included an older Spanish couple who spoke no English, and a selection of other tourists who spoke English but no Spanish. This meant that responsibility for maintaining an awkward, stilted conversation fell to me as makeshift translator. All I really wanted to do was to go for a long lie down, but instead I was pushing the actually quite nice Alpaca steak around on the plate in front of me that the altitude sickness stopped me from wanting to eat while desperately trying to recall long forgotten verbs.
I started taking the Diamox straight away.
Luckily my translation duties for the day ended shortly afterwards when we left the Spaniards in their hotel and Sal and I went to nearby Yanque where we were staying. We almost had our hotel to ourselves. Apart from a couple of friendly Americans (the only other guests), the pet Alpaca, and the girl running the place, we were the only ones there. And after a short walk to the nearby natural hot springs, and back again over a rickety wooden bridge, we returned to the hotel for the coldest night of our lives. So far…
Turns out those natty thermals I bought in the old people’s shop in Southport just before we left weren’t a waste of money after all.
And that was pretty much the end of Arequipa for us. After seeing the condors the next day we headed back to catch our night bus to Cusco…