Peru Ponderings 2009

I say Peru, but really it was more like “I want to go see Machu Picchu”. So I got the permits and went and hiked the Inca Trail. One of my bucket list things. It should have been the trip of a lifetime…

What happened?

I got sick the day before the hike started. I did the hike anyway. I was violently ill the entire time. I’d seen a doctor who told me I just had food poisoning and gave me some medication for it. I didn’t get better. I went and saw another doctor in Peru, apparently I had salmonella poisoning. I got given more medication – I still didn’t get better. Four weeks after falling ill, I was back in Australia and went and saw a tropical disease specialist. A raft of tests, and they still thought it was some bacterial infection. More drugs, still didn’t get better. Saw another specialist – turns out that I’d had mercury poisoning. The only way I could have managed that was the day I got sick, I got a bottle of Inca Cola from a street vendor. Nobody else I was travelling with got sick, and we’d all been eating the same food, so it wasn’t that. I think what happened is that they’d washed the recyclable glass bottle in a stream containing mercury – unfortunately there’s a number of illegal mining operations running along the Cusco Valley, and they contaminate the local water supplies with their runoff.

Lesson learned – don’t buy drinks from street vendors in the Cusco Valley!

Cuy! Most disgusting meat I’ve ever eaten. So greasy.

Statue at Aguas Calientes

Inside Machu Picchu

Llama roaming inside Machu Picchu

Wonder why it was really built?

Machu Picchu at sunrise

Looking down over Machu Picchu

Inside Machu Picchu

Watching the sun rise over Machu Picchu. Kind of. Bit cloudy!

Ruins along the Inca Trail

Ruins along the Inca Trail at Winyawanya

Weaving a shawl! I might have bought a few…I like shopping?

Llama, llama, duck?

Baby llama!

So soft!

Yeah, those are real human skulls on a shelf in someone’s home…

Hope you like eating corn!

Dying the llama wool!

I dunno, they claim they’re a reserve for injured wildlife, but it seemed more like an underfunded zoo

Parrots at the “injured animal reserve”

The colonial architecture in Cusco

The flight from Lima to Cusco – pretty spectacular!