Cusco, Peru - Come to Jesus

Religious Conversion by Way of Oxygen Deprivation
We were both awake at two this morning with altitude headaches.  I turned on talk radio and took many deep breaths before falling back to sleep.  Today we took a warm up hike to speed up the acclimatization, one with many stone steps and a big white statue as the payoff.  These South Americans sure love their Jesus - he always gets the best view.

Jesus is up these couple thousand flights of stairs.  Luckily for us, we already live halfway up the mountain so we only had to suffer half as much.  It sucks but you have to do it, you gotta get acclimated as much as possible.  Two days from now we'll be climbing for six straight hours.

It was slow going at first.  It's an awful feeling of not being able to catch your breath.  You go slowly - one step, pause, another step.  At the top of the stairs we turned onto a paved road and soon he came into view.  There was a storm brewing, thunder and lightning sweeping in from behind him.

He stands on top of former sacred Incan ground, of course.  

I'd shed my fleece on the way up but the chilly wind sent me in reverse. 

There are three crosses to his left, each dressed with some kind of gold embroidered cloth.

The view from here expands significantly.  We could see the eastern edge of the city and the football stadium.

The walk down was easier on the lungs, harder on the knees.  We had to open our umbrellas near the end of the walk, it was just beginning to rain.  It's a few hours later and I feel the benefit, I'm breathing easier and feel much better.  

We're as ready as we're going to be.  At 5am tomorrow, we'll be picked up by our tour company and head a few hours into the mountains to start our hike.