Destination: Peru

[warpus]

Oh I've been to my doctor like 7 times because of this over the last 5 weeks or so.

I've been using prescription topical steroid cremes on it as well as some sort of a pill that messes with your immune system.. They only gave me 3 pills, it's gotta be strong stuff.

Nothing has been working. Until pretty much today, when the rash on my right hand side started to clear. So there's hope I took the day off work today and managed to get an appointment @ a dermatologists' - I was panicking pretty much - the rash was worse when I woke up and I started calling all dermatologists in the city, trying to get in.. I have been waiting to see one, but it was taking too long, and the way things were going they weren't going to schedule an appt for me until weeks from now.. So I took things in my own hands, found a dermatologists' assistant (secretary?) who listened to my pleas for help and said they'd take me in if I showed up with a referral.. so I went to my doctor to get one.. and yep.. tomorrow they'll look at my crazy rash and let me know what the hell is going on. (Yeah, I had to go to my doctor, apparently they couldn't just fax the stuff over)

My doctor seems to think that there is no way, but I think this whole thing might have been caused by my new low-carb diet. It's either all the eggs I've been eating (28 a week at least, 4 a breakfast) or the state of ketosis your body goes in when you consume less than 20g of carbs for a couple days. I searched the keto subreddit and there were a bunch of people asking if anyone's had a rash under this diet.. while at the same time saying that their doctors told them that the rash wasn't caused by a diet - and that they didn't know what caused it.

So there's def. something weird going on.. but I'm def going to Peru. I'm cutting out all eggs for now and starting to eat carbs again (I'm officially down to 180 pounds (from 205) so it's a good a time as any)... plus I got a new tube of creme (yeah yeah, I can't use it too much cause it's strong stuff), so I'm doublecreaming it tonight (man that sounds wrong) and hoping htat by the time I wake up the rash has cleared up even more.

I'm a bit out of it, but I'm feeling good.

I ordered a new camera too! THis baby right here:



Paying $76 to have it delivered to me as fast as possible so that I get it in time

 

[warpus]

Getting that baby with 4 extra lithium-ion batteries (I'll need them on that 5 day long hike)

Yeah, I splurged a bit on sunday. I don't think I'll regret it

 

[timtofly]

Getting that baby with 4 extra lithium-ion batteries (I'll need them on that 5 day long hike)

Yeah, I splurged a bit on sunday. I don't think I'll regret it

Are you taking enough memory cards?

 

[warpus]

I have a 32gb one and heading to Costco today or tomorrow to pick up another 32gb one or maybe 64

 

[timtofly]

That is a lot of memory, what if a card malfunctions, was my point though. Redundancy in batterries as well as memory cards. Unless you can download onto a computer, in between times.

 

[warpus]

Yeah, I ended up picking up 2 extra 32gb cards, so now I'm heading to Peru with a grand total of 100gb or so. It'll come in handy - my camera shoots video in full hd 1080p glory and it'll be tempting to use that functionality.

My hiking buddy went a bit overboard and is bringing 256gb worth of memory So altogether we have over 1/3rd of a terabyte. We were laughing quite a bit about that last night.

We are now in Oakville, a suburb of Toronto, staying at a friends' place. He's driving us to the airport at noon.. in about an hour and a half. Our flight is at 5:30pm so we're going to be there eeearrllyyy, but we hope we can find a bar that will be showing the FA cup final, which I'm eager to watch.. if not, no biggie, I've got a friend recording all Chelsea and TFC games for me back home.

We arrive in Cusco on Sunday at noon or so. I can't wait!

I ended up buying a knee brace for my left knee, which hasn't been acting up lately, but you never know. It's covered through work, so when I get back I'm going to get money back for that.. which will be good cause I'm probably going to be out of most of the money in my account by then Not only that I've also got vaccinations to claim. Should get a couple hundred back.

Anyway, I gotta run. I'll try to post some pics here from time to time. See you guys around!

 

[warpus]

Hey guys,

I don't have much time to write, but I figured I owe you all an update

The Salkantay Trek was AMAZING! Not only that, I almost didn't finish day 1 We spent 3 days acclimatizing in Cusco, but apparently that wasn't enough for me - it was 22km uphill and my body just couldn't take it. I kept having to stop to catch my breath and I fell behind the group.. then my left leg started cramping up, but fortunately a guide from another group found me sitting there and helped me out (like they do in football matches)

On day 2 I rented a horse to help me climb to the highest point of the trek (4,600m). I've never been on a horse before, and there was nobody holding on to the horse via rope (like I thought), so at first it was a bit scary.. There were 6 of us on horseback, me and 5 cute girls from England (Bristol IIRC), so I made some new friends and took some amazing pictures as my stupid rebel horse almost friggin killed us on multiple occasions by falling off the cliff.

After that it was all downhill so I left the horse behind and joined the rest of the group on foot.. Speaking of the group, it was 1 German, 5 French guys and a girl, a couple people from Montreal, a girl from Switzerland, an American, 2 non-French Canadians (me included), a Russian, and a Brazilian. We became a tightly knit group of friends fast.. On day 3 most of us got pretty damn drunk playing cards and staying up late.. Next morning we were woken up at 6:30am by "Hola.. Coca tea!" (or whatever it was). 25km of hiking lay ahead of us on day 4.. which for most of us wasn't fun, but at least this time I finished ahead of 60% of the group.

Day 5 was a wakeup call at 3:30am and a climb up to Machu Picchu (for an hour).. which by the way is AMAZING. After that we got a 2 hour long guided tour of the place by our amazing tour guide Nilton.. and after that me and my friend Steve spent 2.5 hours climbing Machu Picchu mountain.. which was incredibly though, but the view at the top was INCREDIBLE. it was truly a great way to cap off an amazing trip.

Next day we did a tour of the sacred valley, which was pretty cool in itself - including erally raelly really good Peruvian food. Peruvian food is Mother%&*!% incredible.. I really can't stress it enough. It is the best stuff I've ever put into my mouth.

I'm in Lima now - have been since yesterday. We are in the Miraflores district - the culinary capital of south america. Anything you eat here will blow your mind - as it already has mine. We spent some time exploring the centre of Lima and all the plazas there.. now my friend is sleeping (I think he's sick but he won't admit it)

I booked a flight from the northern part of Peru back to Lima on the same day as our flight back to Toronto, so our next week and a half is going to be basically us bussing north, stopping at cool sites (Huaraz for example), exlporing a bit, and eventually making our way to the beach-capital of Peru - Mancora. We plan on visiting hot springs there, maybe mud baths, and possibly surfing lessons.

I gotta run for now, peace out mofos!

edit: the salkantay trek is really the hardest thing I've ever done. I've never put my body through anything like this before -and it was totally worth it. For the group it ended up being 92km or so of hiking - for me it was more like 85km plus 7km on horseback.

My left ankle really hurts .. sometimes.. I think I might have twisted it.. That or I just put too much pressure on it over the hike. Who knows.. We were going to do another hike , a 4 day one, but after what we went through, the rest of the trip is going to be a lot more relaxing.. thus the journey to the nicest beaches in the region

doubleedit: I also lost a bit of skin on my left foot playing football on concrete.. Actually, a lot of us did.. that was the day we got drunk (but we got drunk later, so don't blame the alcohol on our injuries).. Our guide Nilton afterwards said that "I guess you guys shouldn't play football against Peruvians again" Pffttt... Our feet really took a beating though.. Ouch!

 

[Takhisis]

You play on concrete and get injured? What're your feet made of? I'm not a hobbit but I can stand stuff.

 

[Silurian]

Were you playing football with no shoes on or did you just kick the ball to hard

 

[warpus]

Were you playing football with no shoes on or did you just kick the ball to hard

You play on concrete and get injured? What're your feet made of? I'm not a hobbit but I can stand stuff.

We were playing without shoes or socks on concrete, after 3 and a half days of solid hiking through the Andes, mostly uphill.. 20-22km a day or so. After the match a couple of us were missing a bunch of skin from our feet (OUCH), and most of us were limping around.. execpt for our Peruvian guide Nilton

The disinfecting of our feet hurt even more, but it was necessary

I think whta happened was most of us had near blisters, and the skin just came off very easily.. Most of us agreed that football is more important than anything else, so we kept playing. like the idiots we are Then after 10km+ or so of more hiking that day, we got really drunk.. The next day was a very interesting one.. Everyone was hungover and limping.. the distance to cover? 25km Most of it wasn't that steep though, a bit of up and down, some level ground, so it wasn't really *that* bad, but I mean.. yeah it was bad, but it could have been worse

Here's a couple pics I managed to copy from my camera

Here's me at 4,650m above sea level, at the highest point of the Salkantay Trek on day 2



The amazing Machu Picchu

 

[Takhisis]

It appears Canada's rubbed off on you, you don't look very Eastern European.

That second pic looks like a perfect blueprint for a Quake3 map.

 

[warpus]

I only look Central European where it counts

 

[warpus]

On top of Machu Picchu Mountain. It was truly amazing up here


Link to video.

We woke up at 3:30am that day and started climbing up towards Machu Picchu at 5am. Got to the front gates at 6am, spent 3-4 hours exploring the place, then took 2 hours 20 minutes to climb Machu Picchu mountain.. This was right after a 93 km hike through the Andes to get there, so we were EXHAUSTED to say the least. Totally worth it though

 

[Cutlass]

cool

 

[Takhisis]

Heh, 9 views! I represent one tenth of all views in a single YouTube video! Hooraaaayyy!

 

[warpus]

Hehe

I took a nap up there! On one of those ledges close to the crazy drop down, on the left. That was probably the best feeling nap I've ever taken!