At about 9:25 pm a few nights ago, in Cuzco, I was just dozing off in my hotel room after a long day sightseeing – and climbing around the historic ruins – in the Sacred Valley. I came wide awake when I felt the bed moving, and saw the curtain pull rods swaying gently despite the lack of any breeze from the window.
The next day at breakfast, our fellow traveller from San Francisco said it was probably only about a 3.8 quake. She should know. We heard later that the epicenter was about 100 miles away, no damage reported.
Now I can add earthquake to my list of life experiences.
Did you or anyone in your group have trouble breathing in Cusco? One of my friends passed out when we were touring a church. We drank a lot of mate de coca trying to get our blood to carry more oxygen to our suffering brains!
I was fine there, although we all took it easy the afternoon and evening we arrived. I live in Denver, which is a mile above sea level, and I think that helped me – although Cusco is nearly twice that altitude.
The hotel had free oxygen you could use on request. I didn’t, but several others did. There was also plenty of mate de coca available to us, and I drank it a few times a day.
I don’t know if anyone had real trouble breathing. Nobody dropped out of our daily excursions because of health problems. We were in two groups – one which avoided any challenging climbing and took the less strenuous options at some of the sites, and the other one (which I was in and did OK with). Considering I had a sinus infection the whole time (diagnosed just before I left for Lima, and I was taking medicine for it on the trip), I’m feeling lucky.