The two-ridge structure of the site.
The two-ridge structure of the site.
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My husband and I went there in August 1974. The only way to get there was in a rickity old train with windows that wouldn’t close. It was bitter cold with wind blowing in our faces. My the time we got there, my husband had a raging fever. We had planned, hippies that we were, to camp out. My husband, who had been there with his parents a several years earlier, was in no shape to go up the mountain.
We were so broke that I guess we didn’t have the money for the little bus up to the ruins. He wouldn’t have been able to stand it anyway. I knew I only had until the train came back to see the ruins anyway so maybe I just didn’t have time to wait for the bus. I quickly pitched the tent and wrapped my husband in both sleeping bags with water nearby. We didn’t even have an aspirin. I ran up the mountain, ran around the ruins, walked quickly back up the Inca trail towards Cuzco and ran back down in time to pack up the tent and get my husband on the train for the trip back to Cuzco.
We had planned to camp for two or three days but there were no amenities and no medical help there in 1974. We got back to Cuzco and I realized that the cold drafty pension we were in was not appropriate so I mustered my minimal spanish and begged at the local tourist hotel for a room. Finally the concierge took pity on us and put us in a warm toasty room and called a doctor.
The doctor came, diagnozed strep, wrote a prescription for penicilian and left. My husband (who by now was dilerius) and I had to wander through the cold dark streets (it was snowing) to a pharmacy to get the shot for him. They put us in the back room where the pharmacist was boiling the needle. It looked like something you would use on a horse. My husband, barely able to do anything, did manage to time how long they boiled the needle at 11000 feet since it takes longer to sterilize at that altitude. Finally he got his shot and we staggered back to the hotel.
The next day we were at the airport for a flight back to Lima. A smelly fat Frenchman ran up to us yelling in glee that Nixon had resigned. I think that the seeds for us to become Republicans were sowed on that day.
I’m sure the world will blame it all on American tourists.
