Not very good at blogging so far, not helped by S suffering from the altitude which necessitated getting a doctor out to prescribe tablets for blood pressure (!) and circulation. S has had a perpetual headache since Tuesday and even been given oxygen which was very welcome at times. S hoping the worst of this is over now.
To update on the last few days, we left Arequipa (2300m) on Tuesday morning to cross the altiplano where we saw hundreds of alpaca, llama and vicuna (another animal in the same family) plus many volcanoes and fantastic scenery throughout, we arrived in the Colca valley to a wonderful hotel by the river with hot springs to enjoy. The following morning we went to see the canyon itself (claimed to be the second deepest in the world) and the condors who were an amazing sight. They soar in the canyon looking for food using the thermal winds and even turn their heads to look at the many tourists there. We were lucky enough to see about 10 in all, both juveniles and adults.
Yesterday (Thursday) we continued our journey to Lake Titicaca and Puno. This took us up to 3800m and S was suffering increasingly from the effects of the altitude, to the extent of being given some oxygen by Hugo (an oxygen cylinder being a standard requirement for all tourist transport in the Andes). That provided temporary respite, but on arrival at Puno, she had a relapse and we called for a doctor, who arrived with admirable speed and even arranged delivery direct to the hotel of the medication he prescribed (pretty impressive compared to the service from the NHS). By now R was also feeling some effects and both of us spent a fairly miserable night, not budging from the hotel room, and contemplating contingency plans in case S was not able to acclimatise and was advised to go down to a lower altitude. The trek was starting to look a bit on the ambitious side. The next morning involved a very early start (5.30 wake up for 6.10 departure), but S rose to the biggest challenge of the whole trip, gritted her teeth and made it onto the boat. Although she was still well short of 100%, she was slowly on the up and the hurdle she cleared that morning proved to be a key part of her preparation for the trek. Gold star for determination!
The start of the boat trip to Suasi involved a visit the floating islands of the Uros with such lovely people who sang to us and took us out on one of their reed boats. The floating islands are amazing, when you get off the boat you feel the ground sinking as they are made of the reeds found in the area and literally tied down by weights , Then on to Taquile island where we saw how the men knit and women weave hats, belts etc and were entertained by a dance with the cutest little girl imaginable.
Finally we reached Suasi Island, a beautiful small island just off the eastern side of the lake and within sight of the Bolivian border. The hotel is the only thing on the island and we were alone there, apart from a German couple, with whom we had a hilarious attempt to talk German, with R incapable of stringing more than 3 words together without something inadvertently coming out in Spanish. The hotel had a beautiful garden overlooking the shore, with views over the lake that would not have been out of place in a postcard from the Cote D’Azur or the Croatian coastline. The island was inhabited by lots of alpaca who are quite tame and some cute little mammals called viscucha like a cross between rabbits and chinchilla.
The evenings were quite cold and we were grateful for the wood burning stove in our room, although we subsequently discovered that S’s partial relapse into altitude sickness was probably caused by our not extinguishing the fire and allowing it to burn out naturally, because it drew air from the room and so further deprived us of oxygen. Happily though, S’s relapse proved to be short lived and thoughts of a “Plan B” to avoid the highest part of the trek receded further in our minds. But S’s recovery was not helped by the return boat trip to Puno, which started in bright and hot sunshine and then turned half way across into a storm with waves high enough to make even the most hardened sailor feel slightly seasick. R spent the last 2 hours with his sight firmly set on various fixed points on the horizon and S wondered what she had done to upset the Andean gods so much.
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