Altitude sickness in Cusco

We had yummy last breakfast with Bie and Peter before we headed back to Puerto Maldonado by boat and van. Nothing exciting there.

Mindee and Christina had separate flights and Mindee's took off about an hour earlier. Christina's was the same time but different airline. Saying goodbye to Bie and Peter sucked, they were so awesome to us the whole time in the Amazon.

Flying into Cusco is actually terrifying. It's 11,000 feet above sea level and surrounded by beautiful mountains but for the plane to land it is super jerky with a lot of turbulence. You feel like the plane is slowing down then speeding up and the plane has to make a couple turns to line up with the runway. It's scary and I hope I never have to fly into Cusco again.

We got off and Carla said she'd see us at the hostel cause she was going to find Mindee and Carla who were supposed to wait in a cafe on the second floor. Sheridan, Sam and I went to find a taxi.

These two taxi drivers were trying to convince us that 40 soles each was a good price for a taxi because our hostel was away from the city... that's about US$20.

Peter and Bie were in Cusco for a bit before and they said to fix the price before getting into the taxi and never pay more than 20 soles total.

After a lot of haggling and us waking away we finally got the price down to 20 soles total.

Turns out, our hostel was only 15 minutes away! Definitely not 40 soles worth.

It's such a beautiful hostel! Us three and the other three have two private rooms and two private bathrooms in our own quarters!

However, the other the girls still weren't there. Carla was supposed to meet Mindee and Christina in the upstairs cafe because we were the last ones to land.

The hostel owner then told us that Christina previously reserved a taxi van to pick us up... None of us were aware of this which means Christina forgot.

Finally Mindee and Carla got to the hostel... Without Christina. They found a guy holding a sign with Christina's name on it and searched the whole small airport for her.  The taxi guy called the hostel and they told him Christina was already at the hostel which was not true so they left with the van.

Christina finally showed up 20 minutes later. She said her flight was delayed which is exactly what I said probably happened even though Carla shot that idea down right away because there was a LAN plane (which Christina took) next to ours at the Cusco airport... What a coincidence.

Well we were all kinda tired but we had to get more soles and our entrance tickets for Machu Picchu. We headed out to the city, got lost a bit, then finally found the culture building for the tickets.

We all got the tickets (with a huge discount with our international student ID cards). Walking around we were all kind of light headed and out of breath, some of us had stomach and headaches. I was actually feeling great except for getting out of breath while walking.

After we got our tickets, Mindee wasn't looking good so she sat down in the culture center to catch her breath. Then she started hyperventilating and crying a bit. Oh crap.

So I supported her head and neck, had her lay down on the row of chairs with her feet elevated and we got help from the workers.

A woman came with alcohol and cotton balls and told me to put the alcohol-saturated cotton balls up to her nose. Finally after what seemed like a half hour (which was probably only 10 minutes) we had her sit up with me supporting her from behind and a worker from the culture building got a huge bottle of alcohol and poured it on the back of her head/neck, chest, and face. She wet her hands with it then covered her nose with her hands.

Some Peruvian teenagers that were in line to buy tickets gave me some lemon drop candies to give to her which helped a little.

We called a cab and a cop had to help us practically carry Mindee to the car. Sam and Carla went with her. Apparently Carla said her throat was starting to close up too in the taxi and Sam basically said, not a fucking chance. 

Sheridan and Christina weren't feeling well but we had to find a market that sold coca leaves to help for altitude sickness.

We got back to the hostel and Mindee was already in bed trying to sleep it off. We were all exhausted so we literally went to bed at 8:30... Yoloing in Peru.

Buenas noches!