Peru | Adventures with Kit https://kit.gregorydbrown.com Travel with All Your Heart Sat, 20 Jul 2024 00:27:58 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.2 https://kit.gregorydbrown.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/cropped-Logo-32x32.png Peru | Adventures with Kit https://kit.gregorydbrown.com 32 32 A word about Altitude… https://kit.gregorydbrown.com/a-word-about-altitude/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-word-about-altitude Tue, 17 Mar 2020 07:05:33 +0000 http://kit.gregorydbrown.com/?p=212

Standing on the rim of the Colca Canyon looking down–watching for condors, it occurred to me that the bottom was down there–I mean really down there. If you can imagine being at Grand Canyon and watching the sightseeing planes underneath you–this was that!

It sounds amazing but…… altitude sickness?

So what is AMS (acute mountain sickness)? Simply put it’s your body having difficulty adjusting to lower oxygen and decreased air pressure. When you get to about 2400 meters above sea level you may start feeling the effects. For us, the first time you’ll see that will be Arequipa. That’s why we have such a light schedule the first day there.

Symptoms vary but you might experience headaches, dizziness, nausea or shortness of breath. Typically as your body becomes acclimatized, the effects gradually disappear.

Can I take something for it? There are a number of things you can do. Slow down for one. Cut your activity and give your body a chance to adapt. Your drug of choice for your headache and staying hydrated are two practical fixes Remember your mom suggesting ginger ale for an upset stomach? She was right!

The local folk drink coca tea (matte de coca). This is the same plant that spawned cocaine but you won’t get high from the tea and it absolutely works for me. Your health practitioner might recommend Diamox (acetazolamide)

Will I get it? Dunno. We are ascending slowly with adequate time for acclimatization built in. In Arequipa we are at about 2400 meters so its possible you’ll feel some light effects when we get off the plane. We’re there for 2 days before we head out. That gives us time to adjust. When we head to the Canyon we are climbing –to 4900 meters at one point– but most of our activity is at 3700 or 3800 meters. We’ll actually descend to 3200 meters in Cabanaconda to sleep. The slow climb and the drop to sleep will make it fairly comfortable. “Climb high and sleep low” as they say.

And after we leave the Canyon and Lake Titicaca (3800 meters) we;ll actually head down to Cusco at 3400 meters. You’ll all be expert mountaineers by then and hopefully skipping around the Plaza de Armas!

So here are my 5 favorite fixes for altitude sickness in order.

  1. Slow down and breathe deep!
  2. Drink water
  3. Take paracetamol or aspirin for headache
  4. Drink a little coca tea
  5. Diamox if needed
]]> Know your Camelids https://kit.gregorydbrown.com/know-your-camelids/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=know-your-camelids Mon, 16 Mar 2020 01:09:26 +0000 http://kit.gregorydbrown.com/?p=191 So there you are walking down the street in Arequipa Peru and all of a sudden, someone spits! In your direction! Your first question is “llama or alpaca?” Given the likelihood of this happening, it’s good you read your primer because you could immediately identify it as a llama. Important information if you’re filling in a police report.

Actually there are a couple of other things that you could use as identifiers. The alpaca (on the left above) has a kind of smashed-in face in comparison to the elongated face of the llama (on the right). But the big giveaway are the longish banana-like ears on the llama. (The llama is also twice the size of an alpaca but if you don’t see the two of them together, how would you know?) The alpacas in Peru tend to look like sheep with long necks–until shearing season.

The softest wool in the world arguably comes from alpaca. Cashmere is not a sustainable harvest these days–the grasslands they need in China and Mongolia are over grazed. Alpaca is a great substitute. It’s lightweight and contains no lanolin, making it hypoallergenic. It’s much softer than sheep wool but doesn’t have the water repellent properties of wool because of its lack of lanolin.

There are a couple of things to be aware of in shopping for an alpaca sweater in Peru. First one is price. If it looks like you got an excellent deal in a market ($10 to 20 USD for example) there’s a good chance it’s synthetic. It’ll feel warm if you rub it. A baby alpaca sweater –cool to the touch– will cost you in the region of $100 USD

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