Farewell Cusco Peru – You Were A Worthy Opponent
It’s hard to believe that our month in Cusco is already over! So much happened so quickly that we were barely able to keep our heads above water. And it also explains the backlog of blog posts I still have to write that DON’T involve civil unrest! But with the 2022 December protests deescalating for the holiday season, it is finally time to say farewell Cusco Peru!
Cusco was really a challenge for us during this part of our Year-1 Travel Plan. Although we achieved 80% of the things we wanted to accomplish, the remaining 20% will have to wait until we return someday. So this post won’t be the last we make about the time we spent here. But we wanted to give a proper farewell to Cusco Peru that describes our month here with a better perspective than the posts we’ve made so far.
So what was Cusco like? Here is a weekly summary of our month there.
Week 1: Altitude Sickness is a Thing – Be Warned.
We traveled to Cusco a bit cocky.
In the past, Rhonda and I spent a week in Ecuador at about 8500 feet with no altitude effects whatsoever. I even played football (of the international kind) with local indigenous Ecuadorian children and could keep up with them without any problem!
So we figured, what’s an extra 2,600 feet going to do to us?
A lot, it turns out.
Cusco, Peru is at 11,152 feet (3,399 meters). Apparently, when you exceed 11,000 feet you enter the transition zone between “high altitude” and “very high altitude”, to which the human body does not always react well.
And altitude sickness ended up really knocking us out, for over 1 week!
Aside from the predictable effects on your endurance at Cusco’s altitude when the air you breathe only has ~13.7% oxygen (oxygen levels are 21% in the air at sea level), we experienced rapid heart rate, headache, periodic hyperventilation, listlessness, nausea, lightheadedness, difficulty sleeping, and general crankiness.
In addition, we also were pretty sensitive to the new allergens in the air. Locals say this is exacerbated by altitude sickness hypersensitizing the immune system, and it really hit us with what I called “hay fever from hell”. This further depleted our energy and ability to sleep, as it caused pretty severe congestion and ear-nose-throat (ENT) issues for us for a while. At its worst, I developed a minor ear infection and Rhonda developed a minor sinus infection.
But we didn’t realize that the culprit was allergies at first. We thought we picked up the common cold from the airport in Lima! And unfortunately, we took medicine for that with only minor improvement.
This made for a pretty miserable week 1 in Cusco, when we basically convalesced in our apartment and tried our best to recover from two problems simultaneously. There was no real exploration of Cusco at that point, and getting take-out soup from one of the local restaurants to help us recover was a major effort.
Week 2: Friends to the Rescue…and Machu Picchu!
It was at this point that our New York friends, Krista and Rich, came to stay with us. We had planned this for months, since visiting Cusco, Peru was on their bucket list, as well as nearby Machu Picchu. Little did they realize that they would act as unwilling trial-and-error guinea pigs who helped us figure out the real culprit behind our cold-like symptoms!
Both Krista and Rich were hit with the same symptoms as us, to varying degrees, soon after they arrived. Needless to say, we were all pretty miserable. Thankfully, Rich soon realized that he didn’t have his usual allergy medicine with him. So he went to the local pharmacia to pick up the equivalent of his preferred drug of choice Zyrtec (or cetirizina, named after the active ingredient cetirizine).
Soon after taking cetirizina, Rich’s ENT symptoms started to subside. I begged him for a tablet, and within an hour the worst of my ENT symptoms were gone! And my energy level was greatly improved. From that point onward, the four of us regularly freebased cetirizina, in addition to altitude sickness treatments, on a daily basis.
Although the allergy symptoms went away quickly and completely, we still had lingering altitude sickness effects. But thankfully by that point, it was time to hop the Peru Rail train from Cusco to the town of Aguas Calientes, which is used as the staging ground for visiting Machu Picchu.
I say “thankfully” because Aguas Calientes is at an altitude of 6,692 feet (2,040 meters), which is just the ticket for relieving the symptoms of altitude sickness! It was quite the tonic for our endurance woes.
Newly energized, we spent the next two days in Aguas Calientes enjoying the town, as well as the Machu Picchu Archaeological Site. It was amazing!
But that will be the subject of another post.
Also while we were in Aguas Calientes, I heard about issues with the former president of Peru, Pedro Castillo, attempting to dissolve the Peruvian congress. And apparently, this went badly for him. But from my outsider’s perspective, I knew that this was par for the course in recent Peruvian politics, so I didn’t dwell on it.
Little did I know that this would soon come back to haunt us and our travel plans.
We eventually left Aguas Calientes to return to Cusco, hopeful that our time at a marginally lower altitude was what we needed to feel our best.
And it was!
Week 3: Exploring Cusco, Saying Goodbye to Friends, and Peru Getting Pissed Off
We returned to Cusco, all feeling much better at altitude. But since we all had spent so much time in traction the previous week, we made it a point to explore as much as we could locally without breaking our newfound endurance.
We explored the Inca temple site of Qorikancha (also the site of Convent Santo Domingo)…
Checked out the Museo de Arte Precolombino (an extension of Museo Larco in Peru)…
And explored the Sacsayhuamán archaeological complex nearby.
It was eventually time for Krista and Rich to say farewell to Cusco Peru.
But that afternoon we all heard that there were nationwide protests because former Peruvian President Pedro Castillo was impeached for attempting to dissolve congress. And since Castillo was much loved by the people in the rural areas of Peru (especially indigenous populations), they didn’t take kindly to this.
Krista and Rich were able to get to the airport in Cusco and fly to Lima, but soon after protesters stormed the airport runway and shut it down! Unfortunately, protests in Lima delayed their flight out of Peru by about 12 hours, but they did get out unscathed.
Sleep deprived, but unscathed.
And that was when things got a little crazy in Cusco! With the protests and resulting national strike, it was tense for a couple of days. Thankfully calmer heads prevailed and protests went on relatively peacefully, at least in Cusco. But the protests and the associated national strike really put a damper on what we could or couldn’t do tourist-wise for the remainder of this week.
Week 4: Making Up for Lost Time in Cusco…and Bugging Out!
Thankfully, things started getting back to normal in Cusco.
Although protests and road closures were still a threat to ground transportation, the airport was fully open, the military left Cusco, the curfew was lifted, and things seemed to get back to some semblance of normal.
Our Airbnb host thinks that the Christmas holiday season may have had something to do with this, and things could get weird again in Peru when the holidays are over.
Hopefully not.
So we decided to take the lull in the Peruvian protests to explore as much as we could in the Cusco area!
We completed three fantastic day trips, including:
A free 15-mile hike of the Archeological Park of Sacsayhuaman, discovering many little-visited, but spectacular, Inca sites. This was the perfect activity to pass the time when the national strike closed down all of the pay-to-enter archaeological sites!
Mastering the collectivo system of transportation and exploring the Inca archaeological site of Písac, which can go toe-to-toe with Machu Picchu in its magnificence.
Hopping on a public bus and visiting the Inca archaeological site of Tipón, whose fully functioning aqueduct system and degree of terraforming astonished us.
Posts will be forthcoming about all of these experiences!
Sadly, the lull in the protests also inspired us to cut our losses and leave Peru.
The reasons for this are simple. Our next destination was to be Arequipa, where there was significantly more violence and destruction than in Cusco. Because of that, and since the status of the Pan-American highway remains day-to-day, it seemed prudent to return another time to finish our Peru tour.
Sad, but it really is the smartest play.
Future Prognostications, Past Musings, and Sad Partings
To make up for the 5 weeks of lost time in Peru, we are flying to Colombia today (December 23)!
As stated in an earlier post, we are scheduled to fly to Medellin, Colombia tonight, spend three nights there, and continue onward to the sleepy beach town of Taganga, Colombia for some much-needed sea level R & R.
So please, don’t feel sorry for us and our travel disruptions!
But it is a shame that Murphy’s Law was in full effect during our time in Cusco. Cusco has so much more to offer than circumstances allowed us to see.
The Cusco people were so kind and helpful. We never felt in danger or targeted in any way during the protests. And we were impressed with how knowledgeable they were about the Inca sites that are in this area. We had multiple spontaneous conversations with random locals about Inca culture and nearby archaeological sites, at a level that you would expect of a professional guide! And the amount of enthusiasm that emanated from them during these conversations made it clear that they were proud to be of Inca heritage.
Sadly, we completely missed out on seeing the Sacred Valley, just outside of the Cusco region. And visiting Rainbow Mountain was also not in the cards. Protesters blocked off roads to these areas during the narrow window of time when we were free to visit!
Oh well.
Farewell Cusco Peru! You were a worthy opponent. But we need to lick our wounds and regroup, preferably over coco locos on the Caribbean coast of Colombia.
But we now have a reason to come back to Peru! As well as Arequipa, Nazca, and the Pan-American highway sites along the Pacific coastline. There is so much here to explore! We strongly recommend that you come to this lovely country.
Just not when the people are so upset.
Until next time…
Thanks for reading!
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3 thoughts on “Farewell Cusco Peru – You Were A Worthy Opponent”
Y’know the world has gone a little weird when Medellin Colombia is considered a lot safer than Peru. Go figure.
Anyway, glad things went ok and you’re on your way to enjoy oxygen again!
That exact same thought crossed my mind when we booked the flights. And oxygen is wonderful!
10 minutes to eight pm on Saturday night, Lovely program of carols at church and lots of readings. Christmas day service at 10 am tomorrow and dinner will be ready to cook by Dan and John. We will miss you and Rhonda!! Over the weekend, rainy weather predicted for us was lots of wind, rain, wind, wind, rainy lots of wind that blew off the rain and we have had a good day today, no rain but lots of sun and cold weather. No power outage. Merry Christmas!!