The city of Cusco lies at 11,000 feet. Because we have been living at sea level the altitude is affecting us. When I reach my room on the third floor I am out of breath and my heart is pounding. In order to assuage the effects and prevent altitude sickness we have been encouraged to drink lots of water. Another remedy, Coca leaves, are used in tea and candy in order to help with symptoms. The coca leaves just happen to be the same leaves that cocaine is derived from, but they do not result in addiction or act as a hallucinogen.
We continued to have debrief meetings today, but we also had some free time. Emilie, Candice, and I decided to take a tour of the sites via taxi. A driver agreed to take us to 6 different sites for about three dollars a piece. We wound up through narrow cobblestone streets passing tile-roofed houses and alpacas.
Our first stop was Cristo Blanco, a giant white statue of Christ overlooking the city and mountains.
We drove to the next site, ruins from an ancient fortress. “Do you have tickets?” our driver asked. Of course we did not realize that we would need tickets. It turns out the tickets would cost about $25 a piece and in order to visit any of the other sites on our tour we would need a ticket. The ruins did not look too fantastic, so we decided not to go. We asked the driver to drive us back into the city, but he was still going to charge us almost as much as the whole city tour so we decided to walk back down to the city on our own.
We walked back to Cristo Blanco and realized that we would need to take a path through the park of ruins that we choose not to visit. We started down the hill anyway and kept to the side path. We were able to walk right through the park and we passed the ruins. From the park the curvy cobblestone roads took us directly to our hostel.
