From Cusco with coughs

Buoyed by the Peruvian equivalent to Beechams, I leave my sickbed to bring you up to date on Peru. After an easy flight, we were delighted to be waved through the diplomatic/special persons channel of customs rather than waiting in the inordinately long queue of non-nationals. “Los ninos”, explained the official. Well thank you kids, we may not get free upgrades anymore being a family of five (oh how I miss that from travelling as a single woman on business!) but you did save us an hour and get us through in record time.

All continued to go swimmingly – as arranged, a driver was there to meet us. I must say at this point that Peru is the country we had been issued with most warnings about of the trip. A fantastic woman I used to work with called Carol Bond said to get a guide – not that you’re in danger per se, but that you are likely to be ripped off without one. A friend from the internet called Annette had lived in Lima for four years, and wasn’t too positive about the attractions of the city or the local dish, ceviche. Our cab driver to the airport in Quito was full of praise for Chile when we explained our plans in halting Spanish, but – despite the fact we couldn’t understand the words – was very clear on his views of Peru. So, this was the only country where I’d enlisted the services of a local tour company, and I can recommend them very highly. Pascana Amazon Services in Iquitos, www.pascana.com. Lilia Paz there worked wonders with our very limited budget, bringing in 15 days of wall-to-wall action, transport, hostels, guides and airline tickets all over Peru for £500 per person.

Our other much-loved prophet of doom was Uncle Dave. He has been very supportive of the trip and immensely helpful, and Peru was the only country where he made small suggestions and a few less than positive remarks. So we should have known we were in for a bumpy ride.

From the outset, we were underwhelmed. Our driver picked us up in a very beat up old Cortina which sounded like the exhaust was about to fall off. Still, if you’re going to drive through Lima close to midnight, its probably a good choice – you’re less likely to be carjacked I suppose! After the friendliness of the Costa Ricans and Ecuadorians, I if course tried to chat to the guy, but he was having none of it. Lima is right on the ocean, and to be frank, it stinks. I mean that literally rather than figuratively, though …
The hostel was OK, smelly, damp, a bit run down and gave you that disconcerting itchy feeling when you got into bed, but it was clean enough and only for one night. But it was just for one night, because the very next afternoon we embarked on the bus journey from hell.

In an effort to save money and adjust to Cusco’s altitude slowly, I asked Lilia Paz for the bus journey in lieu of the air tickets she had suggested from Lima to Cusco. So ALL of this is my fault. And I have just checked the original price including those air tickets … and its was only $400 more. Joe, shoot me now. Just before we left the delights of Lima, I checked my emails, and there was one from Uncle Dave saying “don’t get the bus to Cusco”. With 25 minutes to spare, there was not a lot I could do.
All fears seemed for nothing as we boarded, checked in luggage, and found it was a very swanky bus indeed – a fully air conditioned double decker with videos and toilets. We were right at the front of the top deck with reclining seats and a great view. Hey, this might even be fun! And the first four hours of so were. Unfortunately the first film they chose was an extremely gritty drama about the treatment of American POWs in Japan, and when they burnt the first twenty or so alive, we had to cover the screen and entertain the kids some other way. We drove through the suburbs of Lima and out along the coast, with miles of desert on one side, and shanty towns on the other, next to the sea. The poverty was eye opening. The Pan American Highway however was in much better condition than in either Ecuador or Costa Rica … so it looks like the government has invested in roads, but maybe not in social conditions? Up until Nazca, the road was good. But then we headed up into the foothills and the journey turned into a nightmare. The last road sign I saw as the sun set, four to five hours into the trip, said 660 kilometres to Cusco. And we felt and mourned every single one of those kilometres. Driving through the Andes is no joke. We ascended nearly 4 kilometres upwards that night, and there was no straight stretch of road until 8am the following morning. It was simply an unending, inexorable series of hairpins, up mountains and down valleys, with horrific drops. We were full of admiration for the bus drivers, and plain terrified at points, but that was as nothing to how Jenna felt. One of our best investments in equipment, a foldaway sink/sick bowl was tested to the limits, as she was sick over and over again. Hungry and thirsty she begged us for food and drink between bouts, but could keep nothing down, and soon she was looking grey and bringing up bile. Joe was an absolute rock that night. Rowan and Rhys slept like angels, while he sat with Jen and sang to her, cleaned her up, ferried sick and child back and forth to the loo (which deteriorated greatly during the journey!); an almost impossible task as the bus lurched and heaved. Jenna caught a couple of hours sleep, and Joe and I slept in fits and starts, usually for about an hour. We were very, very worried about Jen. I was next to useless. A bit of background: all the kids had had mild colds, but Joe was really quite poorly towards the end of Ecuador. As we hit Lima, I got the lurgy and unfortunately my female body clock conspired to make me feel wretched. Not the best time to take a 20 hour bus journey with no washing water and limited toilet facilities! As the gruelling journey continued I felt worse and worse, sick as a dog with a massive temperature. It was all I could do to grit my teeth and sit in one place. Beechams were a godsend, but Joe far more so. He held us all together. At one point I was all for getting off the damned bus in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night and figuring something out, just to give Jenna some respite. But gradually the sun came up and we had made it through the night. The last hour was absolutely blissful. I saw a sign saying 78 kilometres to Cusco, and Rowan and I found milestones … so we counted them down. And then there was a straight road! The driver flew down it (mind you, he’d flown round some of the hairpins, often overtaking as he did). Jenna held her stomach contents in and we finally arrived in Cusco. Jenna had a paddy about getting dressed, as we tried to reason with her that we could finally get off the bus from hell that had been making her so sick, so blinking well come on! We lurched off, dizzy, dazed and ashen faced.

Luckily our guide for the next few days, Martin, was on hand and took us to the much nicer Los Aticos hostel, our home for the next four nights. Here, we actually have three rooms and private bath, internet and the use of a kitchen. We arrived about 11.00am and listened halfheartedly to Martin explaining the agenda for the next few days, sipping Coca tea. This is the famous local remedy for soroche, or altitude sickness, and you test positive for cocaine after drinking it. Rowan liked it! The only thing we registered from Martin was that the next morning we had a 5.30am start to get to Macchu Picchu. So we headed to bed. We got fluids and food into Jen, who bounced back with her usual stamina, and infact didn’t sleep all day! But Joe and I desperately needed to, so the laptop and TV babysat. By the evening we were up to the ubiquitous pizza (Italian food must be the culinary success story of the world) and all seemed much brighter.

The transport to Macchu Picchu was, thankfully, a train: the famous backpacker service from Cusco to Aguas Calientes. It takes an incredible four hours, the first one of which was spent zig zagging up out of the valley in which Cusco lies. You think you’re being taken for a ride (ha ha) and the train shunts 20 yards one way, then stops, reverses, 20 yards the other for the first half hour. But you have to climb close to 500 metres, which seems incredible when you think Cusco is already 3500m above sea level! The train was great, if long, with stunning views of the Andes and the rushing river cutting through them. Though everyone thinks of Macchu Picchu as high up in the middle of nowhere, only the last part is right: its actually a full kilometre lower than Cusco itself. After a short bus journey where Joe and I casted worried, furtive looks at Jen every few seconds, we reached the fabled place.

Now, you know we’re not cruise people, but it must be said we’re also not tour people. First off, after some admin problems with not having a ticket for Rowan (curses) we lost our guide, and had to try and race up the steps of Macchu Picchu to find her. I wish we hadn’t bothered! She managed to make on of the apparent great wonders of the world pretty dull. So far, our experience of great wonders (see Grand Canyon!) has not been as good as lesser-known and visited but equally impressive sites, and Macchu Picchu was no exception. The location is out of this world, with breathtaking views and it is literally in the heart of the mountains and jungle. How and why 800 Incas made this their home remains beyond me, as our guide could not explain. She raved about the perfect architecture, but Joe and I were getting to the giggling stage by this point and Rowan was muttering that she never wanted to see another terrace in her life. So, we sneaked off. Now, you kind of have to go to Macchu Picchu and I was glad we did, but heathen here would have happily sat on the terraces for twenty minutes snapping photos of the incredible panorama and then gone. I also began to feel slightly less impressed when we heard it was 15th century. Joe muttered “what were we building in the UK by then?” Well, quite. OK so we didn’t have the same geographical challenges, but when you think Exeter Cathedral is 12th century, and look at Hampton Court, half the great schools in England and a great wodge of buildings in London for example, Macchu Picchu aint – in my uneducated view – a spectacular example of architecture.
The other drawback with Macchu Picchu is its popularity: it is overrun with tourists. When being jostled by a group of German or Japanese tourists, and herded along set routes, its hard to just sit back and enjoy the awe inspiring setting.

Now far more impressive were other Inca sites we saw the next day, but before that, we nearly had a disaster.

I have halfheartedly been taking Diamox, a drug that reduced the symptoms of altitude sickness, not the full dose as actually the altitude wasn’t causing too many problems. But the cold and time of the month was, so I was taking Beechams which worked really well and enabled me to function. We ran out of Beechams, so I took some combined paracetamol and aspirin on the train back from Macchu Picchu. Far from making me feel better, I felt worse. My lips were tingling very oddly and I just wanted to sleep. By the time we got back to Cusco I felt lousy, and dizzy. I went to take a Diamox, and then saw the warning on the label. Never take with aspirin. I frantically read through the contraindications and saw you should never take more than 300mg of aspirin a day with it – I had taken 600mg in one hit a few hours earlier. Joe and I got the kids to bed and started searching on the internet: possible sequelae include coma and death. Oh blast, we thought, ever so politely. So I obviously did not take anymore of anything, and we both watched me like a hawk as I drank gallons of water to try and help flush anything left through my system. 48 hours later I am relieved to say I am neither in a coma or dead, so I was very lucky. And very, very stupid. It’s amazing that the things which are most likely to kill you aren’t out there in the big wide world: forget the bus plunging over the Andean precipices or little planes crashing, its stupid things like not remembering the contraindications of drugs you read months before when you’re feeling ill and tired. I have always been very reticent to take any kind of drug, and now I am doubly so. Peruvian equivalent of Beechams excepted, which most definitely DOES NOT contain aspirin, and I have taken no more Diamox since. It is a really salutary lesson.

So, pleased to be alive but still very vigilant, I mustered up strength to do a full tour of the Sacred Valley yesterday, but more of that later …