After Colombia, Peru and the bucket list item Machu Picchu was next on the list but first we had a few aeronautical miles to cover to get there which involved three consecutive flights…Our first flight to Bogotá proved to be dramatic as one of the air hostess collapsed with about 10 minutes of the flight remaining. Caoimh was enlisted to help move her to a row of empty seats. By the time we had disembarked the plane she still hadn’t regained consciousness. We took slight relief in the fact that the two doctors on board and the paramedics who greeted the plane didn’t seem to be overly panicked by her condition and chose to let all the passengers leave first.
From there we flew to Lima. Annoyingly we couldn’t check our bags the whole way through and with just over an hour between flights we had to go through Peruvian customs, collect our bags and re-check in or our Cusco flight. We arrived at our gate with time to spare to be informed that our third and final flight of this leg had being cancelled. With multiple flights to Cusco operated by LAN we were quickly reaccommodated on the next available flight, we were assured that our bags would be waiting for us on the other side. With limited Spanish we didn’t quite grasp the reason why the plane was cancelled but suspected it was something to do with numerous flights not operating at full capacity.
Our stay in Cusco bridged either side of our trip to Machu Picchu. Coming from Cartagena, Cusco was cold. Instead of air conditioners there was fan heaters in every room. The balmy heat was a distance memory as we swapped shorts for woolly hats. Flying into Cusco from sea level it is advisable to take a couple of days (at least two, preferably three) to acclimatize to the altitude (Cusco is 3400m above sea level). Other aids include avoiding caffeine and alcohol, drinking copious amounts of water and taking it easy. Prior to leaving Ireland we also visited a travel doctor and were prescribed Diamox for the prevention and alleviation of altitude sickness. Despite all these precautions we both felt a bit under the weather in Cusco. It was hard to determine if it was altitude or general travel sickness. Either way it ensured that our first couple of days in Peru were low key. Instead we sought out the Irish World Cup qualifier with Georgia at the token Irish pub (highest Irish owned pub in the world apparently), shopped many the stall for the perfect Alpaca jumper, availed of the obligatory free walking tour, and marveled that with each passing day it got slightly easier to climb the steps and hill to Intro hostel where we were staying.