Alice Newitt

Day 2: LIMA TO CUSCO, in which I once again take to the skies before making a lot of fuss about climbing a few stairs  

There’s no hanging about with this itinerary. The following morning, we were straight off to the airport to catch a flight to Cusco, although this time I had the comfort of knowing that our guide was responsible for everything. I was astounded to discover how frequent flights from Lima to Cusco are, with several departing each hour. Armed with my trusty rucksack and a boarding pass printed on the thinnest paper known to man, for the third time in as many times, I boarded an aircraft bound for somewhere I had never been before.

Cusco blew me away as soon as we disembarked the aircraft. The airport is nestled right in the heart of the valley and all around the brown brick buildings could be seen stretching up the sides of the mountains. My breath was also quite literally taken away by the altitude. Never before had I ever had reason to know my altitude at any given time, but I was now entering a world in which every person seemed to know that we were 3,400m above sea level, and for the inexperienced like me, the effect was clearly noticeable. Even more noticeable was the brightness of the sun. I’d learnt from the previous day’s nose-burning incident to apply sunscreen regardless of cloud cover, but here the strength of sunlight blazing down was astonishing.  Quickly, I shielded my delicate blue eyes behind my bug-eye sunglasses.

Once we had abandoned our bags in the hotel and I had recovered from my attempt of trying to climb three flights of stairs with two rucksacks and a day bag, the guide took us for an orientation walk, where our minds were immediately overstimulated by the vast amount of things going on at once. On one side of the street a parade was passing, with a whole array of ornate colourful costumes and props, while on our side of the street we were passing the crowds of Peruvians trying to get about their day, and all the time the air felt thinner than that boarding pass I’d been given earlier in the day. Even at sea level, some of the steep cobbled streets would have left me breathing heavily, but combined with the altitude, ascending some of these roads became a herculean effort. Despite this, whatever was waiting at the top of these streets was always worth the effort, and ranged from large public squares to charming little side streets filled with pop-up street markets selling handicrafts.

That evening, our guide told us that if we woke in the night with terrible chest pains or an awful headache, not to worry, as it isn’t death finally coming for us, only the altitude. Thankfully, and potentially thanks to my regime of Diamox tablets, this didn’t happen to me, nor for anyone else in the group and I woke up in the morning, still alive, and most definitely ready for breakfast.