Altitute Sickness

The next morning came with an unpleasant surprise: Elke’s symptoms headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, and fever had worsened but now Göran was down with severe headaches and a fever as well. We had to stop for two full days.

As if that wasn’t enough, our fuel stove suddenly quit and only burned with a sooty yellow flame. Then a cow wandered into “our” side of the river, because the milker had left the gate open as we discovered later. Luckily we herded it back without drama.

We stripped the stove, and cleaned out all the carbon after which it thankfully worked again. But Göran and especially Elke were still weak, and the night turned bitterly cold. It even hailed once. We were very glad for our thick sleeping bags. By morning Göran felt a little better; Elke did not. We weren’t sure if it was a regular bug or altitude sickness, so we decided on more rest rather than pushing higher.

After a few hours with no improvement for Elke, we changed plans and headed back to San Mateo, about 600 meters lower, with a pharmacy and a hostal. We were lucky to be able a minibus with three very friendly Peruvians, who took Elke and her bike, while Jacques and Göran cycled (our should we say rolled?) down into the valley. It stung to give back the hard-won elevation, but the effortless descent and Andean views were a small consolation. That evening we collapsed, exhausted, into our beds at the hostal.

While we were cruising down the streets, Elke was taken in by the kind Peruvians – a woman, two men and a guinea pig (which sort of sounds like the beginning of a bad joke).

Upon the question whether the guinea pig was for petting or eating, the woman laughed and said ‘both, in exactly that order’.

They drove down the bumpy gravel road and after around 10 minutes came to a halt. The little village they had stopped in was famous for its good ‘trucha’ (trout) and the Peruvians were keen to have a quick 20 min lunch there.

20 min in Peruvian time mean around an hour in real time, so Elke was worried that the men would have already been further towards San Mateo and worried that she wasn’t there.
With no phone reception, however, there was nothing to do for either party but wait. At least the Peruvians put a lot of effort into conversing with Elke despite her lacking Spanish abilities. They understood each other quite well and they told her her symptoms were definitely altitude sickness and that she should stay in San Mateo for at least three nights to acclimatise some more. They also told her about a plant from the Andes you could make a tea with that helped very well against the symptoms but sadly she couldn’t remember the name. They even ordered her a chamomile tea to ease her stomach pains.

After dinner and some more dun conversation in the car, they finally arrived in San Mateo, where we were relieved to see Elke was alive and well. Although Elke had only gone with them because she was too weak to cycle and they had all seemed very nice and safe, the long wait for her had gotten us very worried and questioning our judgement. Luckily, all was well though and we checked back into our familiar hostel once again.