The city wasn\u2019t that pretty and we\u2019ll only remember it by a family whom we ran into while we were taking a walk near the river and whom we helped with making a dinner. It was quite simple, in fact; Maria noticed a couple of girls cleaning beans by the road after which she sat next to them and started helping them. I followed her example. After the initial surprise the girls soon started talking to us.<\/p>\n Will you take me to your country?<\/em> \u2013 a little girl asked us.<\/p>\n Why not, but first you have to finish school.<\/em> \u2013 Maria answered wisely, stopping herself from bursting into laughter. She didn\u2019t think that the girl\u2019s mother would be saying: Take me, I finished school.<\/em><\/p>\n We laughed, finished with the beans, playing with children and with a puppy that barely started walking and that was it. A crazy and unforgettable day in Tingo Maria.<\/p>\n We spent the following night in Huanuco, a small town that we won\u2019t remember for anything. We spent the night and the following morning we moved on. We didn\u2019t have much luck with hitchhiking so we got onto the first bus that which was heading in our direction, southward. We realized that we wouldn\u2019t be able to get to Tarma the same day \u2013 it was a nice town, if we were to believe to the locals \u2013 but that was okay, we\u2019d get by.<\/p>\n Also, we wanted to adjust gradually to the altitude in Cusco \u2013 3400 meters. Since Huanuco was at 2000 meters above sea level, and Tarma at 3000, spending the night in a town that was half way to our destination wouldn\u2019t be such a bad move.<\/p>\n So, the two of us got there a bit before midnight not even knowing the name of the place we were in. However, the moment we got out of the bus we noticed something strange \u2013 the temperature. The people were wearing coats, hats and scarves and the two of us, the smart ones who a couple of days before that left all of our winter clothes at our Croatian friends without the slightest idea that we would arrive in the mountains again \u2013 were in shorts and sandals.<\/p>\n We found a room close to the bus station, dressed warmly and went outside to explore the town a bit. We asked the receptionist lady the altitude of the town, but she was clueless. Since we couldn\u2019t find any coca leaves on the mercado,<\/em> we simply assumed that we got there on a particularly cold day, had dinner and a few drinks and went to sleep.<\/p>\n Exactly at midnight we woke up at the same moment and with some indistinct noises made each other clear that he had splitting headaches. We\u2019d never had one of those ever before. Headache, vertigo, nausea, insomnia \u2013 everything was mixing up. We tried everything from sleeping while in a sitting position that was a bit more comfortable for the head the horizontal position, drinking huge amounts of water, to opening the window so the thin air could get inside our small room. We comforted each other that it would pass soon; we tried everything to ease the pain and make it go away.<\/p>\n Nothing worked.<\/p>\n It lasted for hours.<\/p>\n At the end we managed to fall asleep and we woke up with the first rays of sun. I could still feel the headache. We staggered to the street and went to the mercado<\/em> to search for some medicines. Any kind of them. On our way to the market I read the name of the town on a facade of house \u2013 its name was Cerro de Pasco; I googled it in order to find out its elevation. Its elevation had to be higher than 2700 meters, which was the altitude of Cajamarca, where we felt the symptoms of height disease for the first time.<\/p>\n Oh, my God<\/em> \u2013 I stopped in the middle of the street with my mouth wide open, not taking my eyes off my phone.<\/p>\n What happened?<\/em> \u2013 Maria asked me.<\/p>\n Listen to this: Cerro de Pasco is a city in central\u00a0Peru, located at the top of the Andean mountains. It is the capital of the\u00a0Pasco region, and an important\u00a0mining center. At 14,200 feet (a little bit more than 4,330 m) elevation, it is one of\u00a0the highest cities\u00a0in the world, for sure the highest city of over 50,000 inhabitants, the elevation even reaches 4,380 m in the Yanacancha area.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Let’s get out of here!<\/em><\/p>\n We found the lady who was selling the coca leaves and started chewing it. We had some fresh fruit for the breakfast and made the tea out of coca leaves but it didn\u2019t help a lot. The lady told us that the previous night had been \u201ca bit cold\u201d and that the temperature got a bit under the zero degrees \u00b0C. We got back to our room, dead tired, told the reception lady that her hometown was a bit too high, and wobbled to the bus station. We got onto the first bus since all we wanted was get out of there as soon as possible.<\/p>\n A soon as we begun going down the mountain our body started showing weak signs of recovering. On the way to Tarma we had to change two local buses and a car because the last part of the road was closed, as it often happens when you drive through the Andes. We didn\u2019t want to wait on one spot with poor driver so we decided to talk a walk through the village: it could help us to clear our head a bit more.<\/p>\n As we were walking down the street of a half-abandoned village I accidentally took a look at what Maria was doing, as she was walking a few meters away from me, when I saw that she was two steps from stepping into an open manhole. I was sure she\u2019d seen it. Or maybe she hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Look out!<\/em><\/p>\n Everything happened as if were in slow motion \u2013 she made a step forward, turned her head towards me and started sinking.<\/p>\n A second later she was safe next to me.<\/p>\n We weren\u2019t sure how it happened but I must\u2019ve somehow caught her in the air and put her on the road because all she had to remind her of falling into the manhole was a big bruise on her leg and a few scratches. She was quite lucky.<\/p>\n We wanted to take a walk to clear our mind and we got exactly what we wanted. Also, I finally had an excuse to reproach her for that tripping over a couple of times during the following days each time I spotted the smallest bump on the road. We learnt something from it \u2013 always be present in the moment with your full attention focused on what you\u2019re doing no matter how big the thing you do is \u2013 it can be the simplest walking down the road.<\/p>\n In Tarma we found an excellent room in the middle of the town. Our definition of an excellent room while on a trip is the following: if it\u2019s clean and cheap, if you get clean towels, toilet paper and soap without having to ask for it on the reception you can call it excellent. Above all, if it has warm water and access to internet you can\u2019t ask for more. Sheer luxury. We couldn\u2019t be more surprised when the following day we got to experience the personnel cleaning our room and doing our beds while we were taking a morning walk through the town.<\/p>\n The next stop was Ayacucho and the road that led to it was surrounded by beautiful nature \u2013 it reminded us of the first time we got through the Andes. The only difference was that the road wasn\u2019t as bad as the first one \u2013 this one was asphalted, at least one part of it \u2013 so the situation wasn\u2019t that tricky when two cars had to pass by each other. Still, it was a good thing that the traffic wasn\u2019t too thick.<\/p>\n Ayacucho, on the other hand, reminded us of Cajamarca: it was situated on the foot of a hill (we climbed it and enjoyed the view from the top and nearly got lost on our way back to the town; during that time Maria told me how when she was little two of her friends and her spent the night on one mountain north of Zagreb, on their sleighs, and in the morning, having spent the entire night looking for them, the rescuers finally found them), they were at the same elevation (after that night at 4300 meters we didn\u2019t have any problem with adjusting to the height), there were many churches \u2013 33 of them, in fact, one church for every year of Jesus\u2019s life.<\/p>\n Hitchhiking through the Andes (we oriented mainly on newer trucks usually owned by rich locals who didn\u2019t ask you to pay for the ride) we made a stop in a small village where we ended up having lunch with the truck drivers who were, just like us, waiting for the work in progress on the road to be over. We stayed away from the manholes, took a few photos of old ladies and when we got bored of waiting we started walking in the direction we were supposed to go. Two hours after that we road was passable our driver picked us up a few kilometres from the place we stopped and dropped us off to our next stop \u2013 Chincheros.<\/p>\n Just like almost every night we found a room, negotiated its price, and took a walk around the town, sat on a bench, found a few restaurants with affordable prices: I ordered a local specialty and Maria some rice after which she took a plastic bag with some vegetables in it and started slicing tomatoes, cucumbers and other vegetables. One\u2019s choice is quite limited when you don\u2019t eat meat.<\/p>\n I also reduced the quantity of meat I eat: I normally consume a lot of rice, vegetables and fish (if there\u2019s any) that is very cheap in Peru. But now, however, I ordered something I didn\u2019t know what it was and I got chicken on my plate. I hadn\u2019t had any of it in more than a month.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t sleep well that night. I kept turning in the bed, having these weird dreams which made me wonder in the morning \u2013 when we had the whole ayahuasca ceremony we consumed the plant and absorbed its energy which helped us to arrive to certain understanding. Does the same thing happen with everything we consume? Air, food, water? Did my eating chicken which, most probably, had spent its entire life in captivation, make me have all those bad dreams? Did its negative energy transformed into my bad dream? Could that be the reason of people being unhappy? Are we turning into captivated baby chickens? Are we becoming what we eat?<\/p>\n It could make sense; it totally could. The life of most people looks just like that \u2013 like they are in a cage. So, you live in a cage, every first day in a month you have to pay a certain amount of your hard earn money to pay someone to let you stay in that cage. If you don\u2019t pay, you\u2019re out. If you were a chicken, that would correspond to being killed. You do what the guard of your cage tells you to do: you eat when he lets you and there is a certain role that you perform: your function is to lay eggs and serve as food. In other words, you have to contribute to a certain company, vote for a certain political party, watch TV and buy newspapers.<\/p>\n Us Chickens!<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n We arrived to Cusco.<\/p>\n Cusco was definitely the most appealing among the Peruvian towns we\u2019d visited. The streets were clean, there were street lamps, there weren\u2019t that many street vendors as in other towns, there were actually street lights and the drivers respected the street signs. Also, every now and then we\u2019d run into some tourists and we weren\u2019t that used to seeing tourists that often. I guess we were n0t that special there.<\/p>\n Maria had been in Cusco a couple of year before that, but she\u2019d never visited Machu Picchu which was strange. Everyone does that.<\/p>\n Anyway, we decided to visit it now.<\/p>\n While we were studying the most economical way to get to Machu Picchu we explored Cusco. We admired Plaza de Armas, the most beautiful square we\u2019d seen, we observed the colorful graffiti which depicted the history of the town that once had been the capital of the empire of the Incas, we tried to see Saksaywaman, the ruins in the outskirts of the town, but we gave up on the idea when we were informed about the ticket price. At least, for a moment. A local passenger heard us talking about wanting to get there and told us that there was another way to get in there without having to pay anything.<\/p>\n In order to do that, first we had to get to the top of the town. From that hill, accompanied by a number of crosses and a huge white statue of Jesus, we admired the panoramic view of the town, we hung out with llamas and alpacas, and afterwards we devised a cunning plan of how to get in the complex without having to pay a fortune for it. At first sight, our plan was quite simple: we would jump over a small wall just in the place where a public toilet disturbed the view of the people who were charging the entrance and simply walk inside pretending to be a part of group of tourists.<\/p>\n Said \u2013 done.<\/p>\n![\"248\"](\"https:\/\/tomislavperko.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/2481-960x640.jpg\")
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