MUNGO EATS Latin America

We are now in Cusco.  We arrived here last night.  We did get a chance to see some wildlife, which was nice.  We saw flamingoes, vicuñas and llamas (I think, although the llamas were not “wild”).

Unfortunately, this came at a a price.The altitude did prove to be too much for the kids.  Both kids felt quite sick sleeping that high, without having a chance to acclimatize.  Actually, I doubt a lot of sleep was had at all.  The kids were both vomiting, Kevin and I had headaches.  Poor Sean had it the worst.  He threw up several times through the night.  Sara felt a bit better in the morning, and could at least hold down a gravol pill before we started driving.  Sean on the other hand, could not keep down anything, so even after we descended to a reasonable altitude, he was throwing up because he was car sick.  We ended up stopping for over an hour, letting him recover enough to take some gravol and then giving the medicine time to start working before driving again.  We may  have been able to push all the way to Cusco, but since we were all tired, we ended up camped in a farmer’s field for the night, an hour or two out of Cusco. 

The farmer’s field was at about 2700m and everyone slept much , much better.  The next morning, we drove on to Cusco.  I am not sure how long we are here for.  We seem  to have a lot on our lists to try to accomplish while we are in town.  Kevin hopes to get a little maintenance work done on the van and trailer.  Yesterday, we restocked the camper, it was virtually empty.  Tough to come up with meals when there is nothing in the cupboards.  Today, we headed into town to do some gift shopping.  We don’t really think we will hit any better place for gifts than this, so all the people left to buy for were taken care of today (almost!).  It is so difficult to shop sometimes.  We wandered into an amazing pottery shop today, and I could easily have bought many things there, for myself and for friends as well, but the chances of pottery making it all the way back to Canada in one piece is ridiculously slim.  As a result, we left the shop without any purchases at all.  We will have to remember these shops on the NEXT trip to Cusco. 

Once we have accomplished our tasks in Cusco, we will be headed to Machu Picchu.  That is also going to take some figuring out.  We thought we would drive most of the way there, but the owner of the campground here in town, has his doubts as to whether the roads are passable at this time of year.   There are some guests that are supposed to return tonight or tomorrow, who might be able to tell us the conditions of the roads.

So, I will keep you posted.  We will be in this holding pattern until further notice.