Coked to the Gills

Uruguay Guy and Golden Lotus are in Cusco, Peru today.

Seeings how the 30 meters above sea level is considered "high ground" in Uruguay this is pretty dramatic change in altitude for us.

Luckily, strong backed Peruvian Indians are very inexpensive to rent for the day and I've hired 4 for each of us to carry us around by hand on giant thrones. I got the idea after visiting the Peruvian gold museum. GOLD! :) But I'll save the details of that for another post.

The peruvian sherpas have helped with the lack of O2 and they also introduced us to a little friend called the "coca leaf" :) Ok, in truth I think there is some processing that takes place before you get the really potent stuff...I'll wiki this later....but the coca leaf itself has some medicinal qualities. The indians like to put it in their gum like chaw and serve it to tourists in a slightly more dignified "tea" --- which i'm sure loses some of the potency of putting it in your cheek and gum ("skoal brutha")

I've had about 30 of these cups of tea so far with no side effect other than the nasty hangover i get after i sleep -- my solution? "keep drinkin the tea" :)

Obviously lots more to write about and pics to post. but, some crazy tour guide was trying to get us to wake up at 4:30 (!) good grief....i told her no freakin' way and she finally whined her way into convincing me that she really needs to come by and pick us up at 5:20. (what are we doing? going duck hunting?)

Well, if you know anything about cusco, you probably know what we're doing. and even if you don't you can probably guess. but, more on that in future posts. bedtime for now. i'm starting to come down off my coca high and i'm not sure how easy it will be to "score" this time of night :)

ciao,
UruguayGuy