Peru, Day 2

Ever since I got back from Peru, I've been having memory issues. I have been forgetting things that are very important. I won't enumerate, because the list goes on and on and on...but I think it's a stress coping mechanism. Not a healthy one, but a strong one! Sheesh. So I really need to work on writing things down, and not stretching myself too thing right now. I'm hoping it's just temporary...a stress release thing after the conference etc. Sigh. Went swimming again with Heidi last night, which was great. I love swimming. It was much harder yesterday to get in the pool than Tuesday. Tuesday was so cold (the pool is still uncovered!) that I wanted to get in the water. Yesterday, not so much! :)

Back to Peru. Where did I leave you? Oh yes, dirty feet and the upcoming flight to Juliaca/Puno. So our "45 minute" flight to Juliaca needed to leave at the crack of dawn so that we'd be safe. Fine. To get to the airport in time we had to be up at about 4:00 am. Got to the airport, loooong check-in line, but eventually got all checked in. Here at the Lima airport is a little bit of America. I couldn't believe it when I saw a Papa John's Pizza!!! :) That's Rudy walking towards me.

Now, I had NOT taken a valium, because I thought it was just a 45 minute flight on a small plane...like the ones that go from Portland to Bend. I'm fine on those! Come to find out it's a big plane...and the flight is at least 2.5 hours with a stopover in Arequipa (Peru's second most important city)! Because I didn't think I'd need my valium, it was in my checked luggage and I could not get to it.

The flight was NOT fun. I mean, the flight was fine...but I worked myself into quite a state during the Lima-Arequipa leg. During the stopover there Kim luckily had some Zoloft and gave me one. Hee hee. The Arequipa-Juliaca leg was fine! :) We did see some amazing landscapes from the plane. Volcanic cones, high mountains and high arid plains:

We finally arrived in Juliaca, which is the closest airport to Puno. Puno sits right on Lake Titicaca, the highest navagatable lake in the world at 3,856 meters or 12, 725 feet. It's huge! It borders Peru and Bolivia, but we only got to see a very small part of the lake. It has a surface area of 8,000 sq km or 3,100 sq miles.

From Juliaca we drove about an hour to Puno. This is our first glimpse of the lake.

By this time, you could feel the elevation. It was a struggle to just walk up stairs! We arrived at our hotel, which was very nice. Checked in, and took a nap. The reason we came to Puno was to acclimate to the altitude. We were higher here than we would be for most of the trek to Machu Piccu. That first day, we all just took it easy and walked around the main square...except for my mom! Of course. She decided that she needed a little more of a workout, so she hiked up to this statue on one of the hills behind the town. It wasn't too difficult, but none of us were up to that yet. We were scheduled to walk up there the following day, which was soon enough for me.

I did have a mild headache, but other than that was not feeling much elevation sickness. Two others from our group were already flat on their backs though. Intense headaches, nauseas and difficulty breathing. I found that the cocoa tea and chewing the leaves really did help. Here is what my mom saw that first day (and what we saw the next day):