Wednesday 3 July 2002
Yesterday evening we had rain for the first time on our trip and got at taxi back to the hotel. We were absolutely exhausted. Altitude counts some. We also experienced the strength of the sun. When it gently wrapped its ray of sunshine around you it was hot, and when it vanished by 6pm it was almost freezing. At sunset the city changed completely. The small cottages on the mountainside disappeared and instead thousands of light spots from cottages and the streetlamps lit up like an amusement park.
In our hotel room we could not wait to get in the wool underwear and cocoon ourselves under lots of plaids. No heating in the rooms, ugh - it was cold. We slept deeply at 8.30pm. We got our punishment at 3am, as we were wide-awake. At this time it was hard to imagine that we would ever reach Machu Picchu. At 6am we finally had to get up, despite feeling queasy and having headache from the altitude. We counted on that the breakfast and coca-tea might help us.
Later we realized that this did not help at all. I felt bad all daylong and Ane followed me during the afternoon. Ugh, this felt bad and unknown. We spent most of the afternoon at bed, feeling sorry about ourselves.
Nevertheless we made reservations for the short two-day trip to Machu Picchu, starting the coming Friday. We hoped that we would be fit again by Friday. After all altitude sickness is a question of "getting used to it".
We walked into the town square and sat on a bench to enjoy the warm sun. An Indian girl wanted to sell us postcards. She carried a small kid on her back.
Despite our language difficulties, she spoke Quechuan and very little Spanish; we managed to have a small conversation with her. She had two kids and in a minute the older one and her friend was around us.
While the mom was walking around selling postcards to other tourist, the two Indian girls entertained themselves with Ane. She let them look in her bag and tough them to make drawings with a ballpoint. Seemed that they haven't seen any of those before. Ane would like to give them the pen but was afraid that they would fight about it.