The journey to Potosi, the highest (or second highest) city in the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potosí - 4000m!), started badly. the road was more of a rocky river bed and the truck broke down in the middle of the night....
Beautiful place to break down though.
Got there eventually and it was lovely, but the true horror only just stated to dawn...
Colour drained out of the world as the altitude sickness started to kick in.
Coca tea was prescribed as the solution but still the darkness crept into every aspect of being.
The lovely colonial coffee shops became torture chambers.
The streets were bleak and deserted as my head pounded.
The pain rained down.
There was no shelter
Bags of coca could not take away the nausea and the headaches as I struggled to survive.
My brain was mush
my head rotting in the corner
my flesh felt like it was hanging from hooks attached to my shoulders, the horror, the horror.
Rotting, rotting....
and I'm sure that whatever equivalents to these horrid things my human body has were hurting as well.
The lessons I took from all of this? Don't fook around with altitude. i was sick as hell for 4 days, made all the classic mistakes, went straight up from sea level, didn't have enough water, didn't sleep well, turned the heating in the room up way to high, ate a massive meal having starved for the 18 hour bumpy truck-breaking journey up there. It was hard work and to be remembered for next time.
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