Last week I mentioned in my post that if you visit Peru, you really have to visit the Amazon and Machu Picchu. Machu Picchu is quite simply stunning… even if you're sick as a DOG (more on that in a minute). There is a reason it is one of the most visited sites in all of South America. It is worth seeing.
Built some time around 1450 as a royal city of sorts, it is thought to have been abandoned in the mid-1500s during the Spanish Conquests. The site remained unknown to the outside world until Hiram Bingham brought it to light in 1911 after locals took him and his exibition from Yale there. Can you imagine? This is often what goes through my mind when I visit places like this… how far did the person's jaw drop who "discovered" this, when they first laid eyes on it. I mean, I had seen numerous pictures of it before we traveled there, and my jaw dropped pretty far when we topped the hill, and this was our first view of the place.
The closer you get, the more impressive it gets. The craftsmanship that went into the buildings is incredible. Each stone ground to fit the ones around it. No mortar was used in the construction of the buildings, and yet you'd need a hammer to drive even a thin piece of medal between the blocks. Looking off the terraces is dizzying by itself, but thinking of hanging off the mountain to construct them is even more so. To give you a sense of scale, if you look in the screen space that runs through the middle of the city, you'll see a person wearing a red shirt, just left of center. Pretty crazy stuff!
Oh yeah! Being sick as a dog.
It is not uncommon for my stomach to get homesick when we travel. I enjoy eating the local foods and trying new things (when we're on the road, when we're at home that is not the case for some reason), but sometimes you just want something that tastes familiar. Enter my worst travel mistake ever (well, second worst. Losing Holly's camera in Nepal was my first). Holly and I were staying at a beautiful little place in the Sacred Valley and their restaurant seemed very nice. When I opened the menu, lo and behold, there was a bacon cheeseburger on it. I couldn't help myself. When it showed up, but the bacon and the beef seemed a little undercooked… but I ate it anyway. I recall it being delicious actually. Well, at about 2AM I was awoken by the rumbling in my own stomach… that's strange. The next day I didn't eat anything for breakfast and seemed to be okay until I just finally had to eat something… and that's when I began discovering that anything that went in, didn't stay in for very long. We traveled to Aguas Calientes, which is the town just below Machu Picchu, and that's where it really hit me. My fever soared, and my entire body seemed to be rejecting itself. I remember our travel agent saying we only needed a day in Machu Picchu, and I insisted we needed 3 (I was conerned about weather). It's a good thing! Two of those days I spent in bed. Holly eventually found a doctor who spoke enough English that she could understand that I was very sick, and couldn't leave the room. The doctor came to our room and after looking me over wrote a prescription for some sort of antibiotic. That stabilized me enough that I could go see Machu Picchu, though my stomach was messed up for the rest of the trip (I basically didn't eat anything unless I was close to a restroom…miserable).
After returning home I went to see our family doctor and showed him what I had been taking… he asked if he could keep it as a souvenir! Apparently US doctors haven't used that particular medicine in many years, and of course, it was all in Spanish.
–Dan Thompson