AGUAS TO CUSCO
Jared woke up feeling worse than before, if that was possible. So while he stayed in bed, I walked to the pharmacy to try and purchase another South American drug that “may” work (which we all know by now, didn’t.)

Jared sick and looking to "escape" Aguas.

I couldn’t believe the climate change… gone was the sunshine and blue skies and in its place were tons of misty clouds. It was lightly raining and you could hardly see 100 feet about you – the mist was that low.

I convinced the mean staff at our hotel to let us check-out at 11am instead of 9am (who checks out at 9am?!) and we left our bags at the hotel, tried to eat lunch and then camped out at a cush internet café. The café was rad, right off of the square where there’s this giant statue of the ninth Incan King, Pachacutec.

By now it was raining and with the weather change and Jared’s illness, we decided not to back up again to MP. I was starting to feel a little sick too – more of a lack of energy than anything from not eating more than 400 calories a day for several days.

At 3:30pm we boarded our Vistadome train to Cusco. The train has glass ceilings and everyone was taking pictures of the scenery except Jared and I. Why? Because we already hiked through it!

Jared and I on the Vistadome train - exhausted and sick.

I did peak over and saw people’s pictures of MP that day through their digital cameras… wow, were we lucky. You could hardly see MP, it was completely covered in mist and rain. We really lucked out that we had such good weather thoughout the entire hike and especially at MP. I would have been so bummed if we couldn’t have seen MP through the Sun Gate because of some dumb cloud.

The train also had a fashion show - the train attendants changed into alpaca fashions and modeled it for us. One of the techno songs they played was about San Francisco.

Modeling the latest in Alpaca fashions...

A Q’ente van picked us up and took us to our hotel, Los Ninos. Two doors down was an internet café, so we sent off a quick email to our doctor in SF to ask him what we should do about drugs for Jared, who at this point just seemed to be getting worse by the minute. Then we each took an Ambien at around 8:00pm and went to bed.