A word about altitude

I've been told that altitude sickness is a miserably unpleasant experience, and was advised by several people to make sure our first day in higher elevations was a restful one.

Well Mr. Y and I certainly needed rest after two nights in a row with less than 4 hours of sleep, but altitude had nothing to do with it!

We weren't exactly sure how to handle the highest elevation, Cusco, which we had been told has an elevation of around 11,000 feet, but we had used aspirin with some success in Yosemite so we made sure to take a bottle with us because we didn't know when we would have an opportunity to try the coca tea that is so popular in Peru at higher elevations. The Incas (and still some locals) chew coca leaves, but we had no clue what those even look like, much less where to find them.

Then, in the Lima airport, we found the most wonderful product: Sorocchi pills. They are basically a combination of caffeine and aspirin and, I'm guessing, the ingredient that makes coca leaves so effective, and sure made it easier to addres the altitude issue without having to frequently guzzle coffee and pop aspirin.

As it turned out, however, I never did have any altitude issues, and neither did Mr. Y, although that could have been because he drank lots of coca tea or because we structured our trip to progress from lower to higher elevations over a matter of days, affording us time to acclimate.