The Two Mile High City

Machu Picchu – UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the New Seven Wonders of World. It was my goal to spend my 30th birthday here, but doing so meant flying into Cusco, the two mile high city.

Cusco sits at 11,152 ft (3,399m) making it the 9th highest large city (> 100K inhabitants) in the world.

Heading into our trip to Peru, I was ready.

I’d read all the blogs, done my research on altitude sickness, prepared physically and came stocked with enough medication to run a small clinic.

I’d heard well before our trip that breathing at high altitude before acclimating was difficult, but nothing could have prepared me for stepping off the plane in Cusco.

Within 10 minutes of walking, barely far enough to leave the gate, I had to stop to catch my breath and slow my heart rate.

“No problem!”, I thought, “Only going to get easier from here!”

[Cue the massive eye roll]

First of all, nothing is flat in Cusco. Heck, nothing in Peru is flat! Obviously its mountainous, but even the shops – the restaurants – the hotel rooms – everything was up, up, up! After a long day of climbing up and down mountains, up and down ancient ruins, the LAST thing I wanted to do was climb 4 flights to our room.

I was okay the first couple days. Tired! and a little sore, but nothing too bad. I’m tough after all – I’ve got this!

But then as the days wound on, the temperature dropped and I started having major issues.

What started as a cold and a little wheezing, evolved into full on liquid in my lungs – crackle when I breathe – pulmonary edema. To add to it, I had all the symptoms of altitude sickness to boot (not sleeping more than a few hours at a time, migraines, exhaustion, extreme soreness, etc).

The worst night, my boyfriend and I fought endlessly about whether to visit the emergency room. I didn’t think it was that serious – meanwhile he was researching 9-1-1 numbers (did you know Cusco’s emergency line is 105 for police or 133 for medical emergency?). We settled at visiting the pharmacy who ended up giving us a canister of oxygen, some herbal supplements, and sending us on our way.

Unfortunately, these barely helped. Sure, I could breathe little easier after sucking down my tube of oxygen, and was definitely more alert with the supplements, but still was barely sleeping and had massive migraines.

Thankfully, we left the next day for Aguas Calientes, which is significantly lower in elevation than Cusco. It was like magic! Once I’d spent a few hours in the lower elevation, I could not only breathe perfectly normal, but had all of my energy back too! We had an AMAZING few days visiting Machu Picchu and the surrounding cloud forest before heading home (see my Machu Picchu post!).

Sadly, this likely marks the end of my hope to ever visit Everest Base Camp. While just ascending to this high of altitude for a day or two likely wouldn’t have caused me problems, staying for a week was really hazardous.

After this experience, I think I’ll pass on any extremely high altitude vacations from now on!

// Onward & Upward //

~ K