The Peruvian Weight Loss Plan

Acai is a thing of the past. The Peruvians have come up with the ultimate weight loss plan for gringos. It is commonly known as altitude sickness. The symptoms: Headache, mild diarrhea, nausea, and stomach cramps. So, through a combination of anorexia (the thought of food makes my stomach turn) and bulimia (I wont fill in the details on that one), it is a surefire way to drop a few pounds.

It all started on the 22 hour bus ride up to Cusco (3200 m) from Lima (0 m). Things were going okay for the first 12 hours or so, and then around 6am both Sterling and I started to feel a bit weird. Things rapidly went downhill, and when we finally got in Cusco at 4pm we both thought we were close to death. Well, maybe not that bad, but it was bad. We surrendered to one of the taxi drivers touting his hostel at the bus station (I never do that) and let him take us to town. After a cup of Coca Tea (coca leaves are the base of cocaine, local remedy for altitude sickness, or just about anything, really), we were feeling a bit better. Never the less, we passed out at around 5:30pm and slept until 7am. We have both been having symptoms ever since the bus ride. Climbing a short set of stairs makes me pant. I get nervous whenever a bathroom is more than 50 m away. Hopefully things clear up a bit before we start the Machu picchu trek tomorrow at 4am. The first day of the hike we gain over 1000 m to an elevation of 4200 m. The way I see it, things can only go up from here. :-)

As a side note, it only took three days for my pedometer to fall off. It is now somewhere in the streets of Cusco. A little sad, but I think the reading was already all sorts of messed up from the bumping on the bus ride, so it would be cheating to claim all those 'steps'.