As Michael Palin says in his travel documentry Full Circle:

´Soroche. That's what I'm suffering from. It's a Spanish word, and has a glamorous ring to it that the English counterpart, 'altitude sickness', sadly lacks. All of us are, in varying degrees, 'soroched', and we shall spend two days here adjusting our systems for a further week of high-altitude travel that lies ahead´

We can confirm Michael Palins observations! We took off from Lima airport at 11:00 arriving in Cusco at 12:00, only 1 hour flight but a jump of almost 3000 meters. On arrival everyone walked off the plane really slowly, all heading straight to the toilet where a very long queue formed (one effect of altitude is you need to wee a lot!)

So we go in a taxi to our new hostel and settled in (The oxygen cylinder and mask next to reception concerned us a bit!).

However not much happened thus far. But within a hour Dave started to feel like he was drunk, and walking up the small flight of stairs to our room was proving exhausting!

We managed to stay conscious until 4pm when we crashed out in bed, awaking at 8am the next day. After this long sleep we attempted breakfast but struggled (altitude slows down your digestive system) and then went for another lie down for an hour or two before dragging ourselves out into Cusco.

Only 10 minutes later we were out of breath, dizzy, developed headaches and Dave´s legs and back went ice cold (Dave was looking down as he really thought someone had poured ice water all over him!)

We headed straight to a cafe and purchase two Coco teas (Coco leaves are the local remedy for soroche) Things must of been bad if Dave resorted to drinking tea!

This tea has the added bonus of making Emilys mouth go numb which meant she couldn´t speak properly (much to Daves amusement)

The rest of the day involved resting and sleeping, with a valiant effort to have a pasta meal for dinner. Then bed.

But we are happy to say that on day three we are starting to acclimatise and managed a good 5km hike up and down some steep hills. Inca trail is only a few days away, hopefully we will be ready by then...

All this altutude sickness is completely worth it when you explore Cusco, an incredibly beautiful city, but for that you will have to wait for the next blog......