Altitude sickness

I'm not feeling so well. To be more specific I think I'm suffering from altitude sickness. True, the symptoms might just be slightly different than what a doctor would describe as your average altitude sickness, but since I've got doctors in the family and all that doctoring doesn't seem that difficult except for those fancy Latin names that doctors invent to make them seem more intellectual than your average dodo I thought I ...eh...I eh....shit...lost my point...what was I on about...? Oh whatever: sickness it is and on an altitude I am, ergo altitude sickness.
’So what are the symptoms?’, you might ask. I'll tell you. Frequent yawning, impatience and rudeness. I swear to god, the next "guide" who makes me walk up 10,000 steps to look at some rocks that haven't been put on top of each other by a real inca hundreds of years ago and pulls out his handbook to read to me what it is and then tries to sell me his brothers cd with 25 instrumental versions of "El Condor Pasa" I will have to spit in the face like an angry llama and turn him into an overpriced knitted handbag with a cute alpaca pattern or an out of tune pan flute.
We've been stuck on the altiplano for weeks now and I'm sick of ruins. I have had enough of llama sweaters. Go away with your alpaca steaks, they're the yuckiest of tourist attractions. Had it up to here with culture. Tomorrow I'll go up to Machu Picchu but then that’s it. I will find a couch, do an Al Bundy and sit down with one hand in my pants and a remote in the other, turn of any cultural sense that I have and watch footy for entertainment.
No more museums for me. Especially the ones in Cuzco. The Inca capital should get their shit together really; you pay top dollar for a “boleto turistico” that lets you enter a whole bunch of museums the city has to offer only to find that the exhibitions repeat themselves and none really gives you any idea of how the local culture developed and consequently got erased by the visiting españolos.
Cuzco as a city is very nice though so stop there for a few days next time your in the neighborhood. That’s an order.
On a more serious note, being able to do this trip and see so much of the world is great and I think the best part of it were meeting lots of nice people and the many cool adventures but there comes a time where tourist attraction-fatigue kicks in and all you want to do is go home and see your friends to have a chat and a drink and do the thing you do when you are in the place you call home, which in my case is being absolutely useless.
So the last leg of our trip is starting and the countdown has begun. Get ready people! We're coming back! Only 598 hours, 21 minutes and 13 seconds...12 seconds...11 seconds...10...9...

Trip to the middle of nowhere - Andes western cordillera

After weeks of traveling we were yet to experience the (supposedly) amazing sights South America has to offer. In fact, we were tired of being driven through uninteresting territory, vast middle of nowhere routes only familiar to truckies and bus drivers. We wanted WOW or whatever that means, we wanted to feel that our 11 weeks in South America were worth it. Renting a car was one of the best things we did. From there we were off to discover some of the most extraordinary sights we had ever seen. And that includes Debbie does Dallas I - IV! It was exciting and overwhelming: moonlike terrain, mountains with multiple colors, gigantic cacti showed us that there is more to Argentina than Buenos Aires, tango, meat and Malbec. It also showed that life is possible even above 4800m above sea level where breathing becomes an exercise of its own.

Our journey trough the altiplano on 4x4 was great thanks to Renan, our super (tiny) Bolivian driver. Always happy to share his traditional bolivian hits not to mention the Spanish covers of American hits including ABBA, Maddona and all our other favorites. He also taught us how to chew coca, an important part of Bolivian culture. Arne said he didn't feel anything but I suppose it is because he is always high.

Altitude was not the biggest challenge. During these days it was very VERY cold, especially at night when temperatures go down to as much as -20 degrees... Brrr. Whilst the drivers and caretakers sat happy and warm in their TINY little room we, DUMB tourists, spend the evening trying to get the only gas heater in the whole hostel to work. It gets better, on the second night there was no heating whatsoever and only the promise that after dinner someone would turn on the fireplace in the living area. As expected nothing happened! Funny enough our drivers passed some kind of hotels on the following day and told us that there you could sleep with heating and had a lot more comfort... The only issue was they were too expensive... later we all figured that expensive meant 20 USD and wondered why we had ’suffered’ so much :) At the end was it worth it? Yes, off course but only because you do it once in a lifetime.