Altitude sickness
Hi all, greetings from Bolivia. You may have seen that there are basically no posts since we arrived here (Mike on the bike and me on a border crossing). Well, the reason is simple. I have been feeling sick as a dog for the entire time we have been here.
La Paz is the highest capital city in the world, at around 3,000m. Potosi, where we headed afterwards is 4,060m, with its mines at 4,200m.
I’m usually a fairly reasonable travelling companion, but I fear that I have been pretty poisonous for my dear husband for the duration of our time at height. Altitude sickness has many friends – breathlessness is its closest ally, but sickness and sleeplessness are part of the gang. In La Paz, this meant that it was very hard to do anything apart from loaf about. Walking up stairs resulted in a old-man-chest-grab and bend-at-the-hip at the top, even getting out of bed would need a minute’s repose once on our feet.
The highlight of La Paz for me was leaping out of the wheezing bike and having to push it up a 45 degree angled hill. I pushed with every ounce of my being, then had to run quickly up to the next set of lights to do it again. It then took me 10 minutes, sitting on the curb, gasping, to catch my breath. From then on in, I have had a raspy little cough which would make Tiny Tim proud.
By the time we got to Potosi, I had a perpetual headache and felt like I had a strong flu all the time. We were there for 3 days. That’s a lot of woeful wife for Mike to deal with (he didn’t get the headaches or the flueyness). Mike himself woke up one night hyperventilating because he couldn’t get enough air. Conversations are peppered with momentary breaks where one or other of us has to take 5 seconds to concentrate on getting enough oxygen. Forget walking and talking…!
We’re now in Sucre, having dropped a kilometre last night in a 2 hour drive, and though I feel better, Mike and I are still wheezing…
