I tumbled out of the car onto the gravel like a freshly severed head rolling off a guillotine rack and threw up some more. And that's it- there's not much else to tell. The bike ride was at an obscene altitude and I became horribly sunburnt between the end of my sleeve and the beginning of my gloves. The highlands were beautiful. We rode through a few tiny villages and the kids came out to point and jeer "gringooo" at us. I became ashamed of my heritage. We went into one of their small dwellings to see the guinea pigs they kept for culinary purposes. I became reconciled to my heritage. I began to feel better. We left for Bolivia soon after.
One other thing about Cusco: we were walking on the sidewalk to the bus station to buy tickets for the overnight trip to La Paz. The street was sloped with a cement wall at the lowpoint- at the bottom of the hill we turned to walk along the wall. Uphill from us a semi truck somehow disengaged from the park brake, rolled backwards gathering speed for a few meters and hit the wall. Sound-wise it was pretty startling, and we were jut a few feet from being crushed. Neither of us were overly concerned, though this seems strange to me now. We swaggered away, Rambo-like after an explosion. Just the sort of sangfroid I've always coveted, but never been able to convincingly pull off.
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