17: climbing in altitude

overlooking the Plaza in Arequipa

The night bus from Nazca to Arequipa was a long one. I slept pretty fitfully and woke at around 5am thinking it was earlier. I couldn't help thinking about various people at home, 6 hours ahead, and wondering what they were doing. Most people were still sleeping, although Amy woke up around the same time I did, and we sat watching the desert as the sun rose. Something was glinting in the sand, creating an effect that made the ground seem to sparkle, and it was only as the sun got higher and stronger that you could see that it was actually due to the light reflecting off a sea of thousands of plastic bottles. This rubbish went on for miles and miles.

Monastério de Santa Catalina

Arequipa is a pretty (in its centre, anyway) colonial city - the second largest in Peru. It's 2,400m in altitude and we were starting to feel it: shortness of breath, and for me, weirdly sensitive sinuses. Our tiredness combined with getting used to the thinner air meant the day was pretty much written off; we managed a bit of light shopping and lunch, and by the time I'd faffed around trying to confirm our later flights from Cusco back to Lima, we'd knackered ourselves out.

The following day we visited a shop specialising in alpaca garments, and were taken round the back to see some of them sitting around in a field, and then on to see how the wool was sorted, spun and dyed - something we would see a few times in different places! We spent a lovely afternoon wandering round the Monastério de Santa Catalina, a beautiful nunnery-turned-museum with peaceful streets within its citadel, and I ate a truly enormous jacket potato, which was perhaps the best I think I have ever eaten, anywhere.

That evening we climbed aboard the night bus to Cusco, where I'd booked us VIP seats at the front on the top floor. Amy was not impressed, and spent most of the beginning of the journey in trepidation of the driver's actions: "He's not really going to overtake here, is he? Oh, yes. Yes, he is." Despite our alleged comfiness, the road was awful, and windy, and neither of us slept much at all. The temperature seemed to range between "off" and "on", which meant wearing all your clothes inside your sleeping bag, or trying to take everything off to cool down. Needless to say everyone was pissed off on arrival at 5.45am. I had visions of us sitting on our rucksacks in the cold outside the hotel, but as soon as we got there a guy came and took both our rucksacks, brought us in, and sat us down with a cup of coca tea until our rooms were ready. They couldn't have been kinder.

We slept for a good few hours, waking up again with the feeling of a massive hangover, and after a long shower walked into Cusco to have a massive breakfast at Jack's café (literally called "Gordo" or, "Fatty"). The rest of the day was spent getting bits and pieces needed for our trek: walking poles, flasks etc. That night we met with our tour group for the briefing for the next day. It was a bit unclear about exactly what was happening; due to a road being rebuilt, we would be doing a completely different walk to the one we thought we had booked on, albeit apparently higher and colder!

We had a very early start the next morning. Our group consisted of a couple of Aussie girls called Carly and Amanda, a guy on his own called Chris (his friend was in hospital with salmonella) and two Korean girls, as well as some Brits and some French Canadians doing another walk the following day. Our bus wound round uphill past the ruins of Sacsayhuaman, and we got a good view of the terraces from the road as it rose above the town. Our first stop was a project village sponsored by GAP (the tour company), where we heard more about the spinning, dying and weaving process. I always find the setup of demonstration and then being expected to buy a little awkward, but bought a little woven llama to give away as a present when I got home.

Following the village we visited a llama/alpaca project, where we entered the pens of different llamas and alpacas and were given leaves to feed them with. They were amazingly soft - especially the juveniles - and luckily I didn't suffer the same irrational fear of them that I experience with sheep (this isn't a real fear, just a dislike of being ganged up on with no means of escape).

our guide Henry drinking strawberry chicha

After sampling chicha (beer made from corn) and playing a game with frogs in a local bar, we headed to Ollantaytambo, where we would spend the night before climbing. As we approached the town, the sky disappeared behind a smoky veil, and I noticed that the mountain was on fire. The flames formed an almost straight line, as though it had been set deliberately, but nothing else about it looked in control.

As the sun set, we climbed the Incan ruins as Ollantaytambo. It was quite incredible to see the size of the massive blocks of stone which had been lifted up the hill. Before dinner we were told that the plans for the walk had been changed. Farmers were going on strike some time in the next couple of days, and that would mean roadblocks and no trains from Aguas Calientes, the town near Machu Picchu. We would have to do our walk in two days instead of three to make sure we got back to Cusco in time. Everyone felt a bit annoyed about this, having spent quite a lot of money on a trip that wouldn't be as long as we had thought!

We all gathered together to have dinner in a local restaurant, and our guide Henry drank about five cuba libres. The final part of my trip was about to begin.

dusk over Ollantaytambo