It was the fifth day of our jungle tour but we barely spent anytime in the jungle. Instead what started out as an easy day(10am flight to cusco and a day of shopping and checking out a museum) became anything but.
We left our lodge at 6am. The latest wake up time I think we have had all week. After breakfast we took a two hour boat and then a one hour bumpy van to be the first ones at the puerto maldonado airport. We arrived around 10am. Our flight was at 1125, or that's how it was scheduled.
We decided to give ourself a bit of luxury and go into the airport lounge which was either free, $12 or $25, we still dont know. We had access to a computer, snacks and drinks. Jess and nicole decided to really drink. I had my first coke of the trip(since my heartburn I've been laying off). We hung out for a bit and as other people joined us, some of whom from the lodge, we started to realize how unreliable star peru, our airline was. Remember our flight was 5 hours late on the way there. Now, aone hour delay quickly turned to three, jess and I wound up napping at different points while nicole binged on the computer (as she hadn't even bothered in the jungle). Then we are told at around 3 pm that the flight was canceled. And of course by then there was no more flights going out of a town that had the same population at my hometown of Clifton park. Panic swells. People have Inca trails starting the next morning (that you have to book Hella time in advance), my friends had an international flight they would miss without making it to cusco that night and a man we met at the lodge had a pageant to produce new years eve in the bay area. Everyone is so pissed and the people behind the desk are helpless and clueless. The lady from the jungle tour operator even came down to help us and others out.
After hours of going back and forth, trying to figure out the best plan of attack and with who, to keep prices down, we decided on a private 8 hour truck back to cusco. 600 soles, or $66 a person for the three of us seemed reasonable since we had to get back to cusco to get our stuff.
We were told it could be dangerous because of the road conditions and there is always the errant concern of being alone with a man in his country where you can't speak the language. However once we saw the near monster truck pull up with tires up to our waists we hopped in.
4 hours later we are in a small town about half way and we stop for dinner. 4 sopas, 3 pollos y una bisteck costs us 7$ EN TOTAL!!!!
As we are nearing cusco we start getting higher and higher quickly surpassing the 11000 ft of cusco (according to an app on nicoles phone) By the time we hit 15000ft I'm barely mobile. It feels like there is a cold, white (not sure why but it felt white) liquid coarsing through my veins replacing the blood. My head is hurting, I feel so nauseous. I feel worse then I have felt ever in terms of altitude or sea sickness. I try to stay quiet ignoring the lighthearted chatter in the back of the truck with nicole and jess, I'm doing everything I can not just to run out of the truck, because, well that wouldn't have accomplished anything as it wild not change the altitude. I just needed to keep it together until we got to cusco. I was already loaded up on altitude sickness meds, ibeprofen and was wearing my sea bands but nothing worked. I just had to grin and bear it.
And I did. We left the airport around 4pm. We arrived at our hotel at 1230am (whom we had previously released our reservation to thinking we'd take a bus that wouldn't get us in til 6am) and were given a double room with enough time to sleep for about 4 hours before our next flight. I could barely talk. I let the girls deal with everything and I went off to sleep.
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