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Welcome To The Land of The Incas
Jun. 1st, 2007 12:06 pmThe flight to Peru was pretty uneventful, but something about leaving your country’s borders is always a bit intimidating, I think. A layer of safety net is no longer there. It’s probably all in my mind, the inflated idea of a home safety net to begin with, as well as the perceived barbarity of a less-developed nation, but still, it’s a teensy bit scary. We get over it, tho. Part of the excitement. And then there’s the 6-hour layover in the Lima airport, waiting for our flight to Cusco. No sense paying for a hotel room, let’s just camp out in the coffeeshop or something. God that was grueling; spending that much time in an airport does a number on your brain, time gets all bendy with sleep deprivation and the anxiety of missing your flight or whatever. Thank god Nepenthe brought a deck of Uno cards. But finally we boarded our next flight to the sacred valley of the Incas! Woo!
First thing that hits you when you leave the terminal? Automobile exhaust. A sooty scratchy cloud of harshness, apparently they don’t even bother with emission controls in this country, no catalytic converters, no mufflers, no nothing; it’s loud and choking, holy crap it’s bad. I’ve heard it’s worse in Mexico City and Shanghai, if so I don’t even wanna think about it. Yeesh.
But when you get off the streets, it’s not so bad. We crash in our hotel rooms for a few hours then meet up again for our first foray into Inca ruins, the temple grounds of Sacsayhuaman are just above Cuscso. Sacsayhuaman is more or less pronounced “Sexy Woman”, I’m not kidding. And when the locals say it it sounds totally sketchy, with a lecherous drawl “Ey amigo…would you like to go to Sex-sey Wha-mahn…” Uh, beg your pardon? It’s awesome.
What is not awesome is altitude sickness. Cusco is like two miles above sea level, I didn’t bother getting the anti-altitude meds that Couplingchaos, Canongrrl, and Nepenthe did, figuring I’d tough it out while my body acclimated, I spent a summer in Boulder and never felt a thing so this couldn’t be that bad, right? Man, that first day was brutal. Try walking up stairs and your head is pounding to explode with each heartbeat, lungs and muscles burning, nausea claws at the edges of your stomach, no matter how hard you try your body just does not have what it takes to go any further. The only saving grace is once you do sit down and rest for a minute, you feel pretty much back to normal. And then you get up and try walking and after a few steps it feels like you’ve gone through the wringer again. If I had any brain space left, I’d feel chastened and sobered by my body’s newly found limitations, but I’m too busy trying to put one foot in front of the other and not collapse in the red clay dust that covers everything in this town. Yeesh.
But Sacsayhuaman is cool. Big stones carved and fitted into walls draped over the landscape. Terraces and plazas and foundations sprawl over the hillside. Local guides point out forms of condor and snake and puma in the walls. Ok can we go now I need to get back to the hotel so I can die.
First thing that hits you when you leave the terminal? Automobile exhaust. A sooty scratchy cloud of harshness, apparently they don’t even bother with emission controls in this country, no catalytic converters, no mufflers, no nothing; it’s loud and choking, holy crap it’s bad. I’ve heard it’s worse in Mexico City and Shanghai, if so I don’t even wanna think about it. Yeesh.
But when you get off the streets, it’s not so bad. We crash in our hotel rooms for a few hours then meet up again for our first foray into Inca ruins, the temple grounds of Sacsayhuaman are just above Cuscso. Sacsayhuaman is more or less pronounced “Sexy Woman”, I’m not kidding. And when the locals say it it sounds totally sketchy, with a lecherous drawl “Ey amigo…would you like to go to Sex-sey Wha-mahn…” Uh, beg your pardon? It’s awesome.
What is not awesome is altitude sickness. Cusco is like two miles above sea level, I didn’t bother getting the anti-altitude meds that Couplingchaos, Canongrrl, and Nepenthe did, figuring I’d tough it out while my body acclimated, I spent a summer in Boulder and never felt a thing so this couldn’t be that bad, right? Man, that first day was brutal. Try walking up stairs and your head is pounding to explode with each heartbeat, lungs and muscles burning, nausea claws at the edges of your stomach, no matter how hard you try your body just does not have what it takes to go any further. The only saving grace is once you do sit down and rest for a minute, you feel pretty much back to normal. And then you get up and try walking and after a few steps it feels like you’ve gone through the wringer again. If I had any brain space left, I’d feel chastened and sobered by my body’s newly found limitations, but I’m too busy trying to put one foot in front of the other and not collapse in the red clay dust that covers everything in this town. Yeesh.
But Sacsayhuaman is cool. Big stones carved and fitted into walls draped over the landscape. Terraces and plazas and foundations sprawl over the hillside. Local guides point out forms of condor and snake and puma in the walls. Ok can we go now I need to get back to the hotel so I can die.
