Hi everyone, I last blogged on Wednesday, & Thursday about 6:30 am the Monagrams host in Lima, brought me to the airport, he's a nice older fella, but younger than me, and very helpful navagating me thru the airport, ticket counter, and found a way to bypass the block long line, so all I had to do was wait two hours to board the plane to Cusco.  Had two surprizes, a $78 surplus over weight charge on my two checked bags, and the second surprise occured as I walked up the ramp into the Cusco air terminal, over the next two to four hours, as I participated in the Cusco area tour I had a beaut of a headache, felt queezy, lost all energy, and just wanted to crawl into bed, and not move, with the lights out.  A bunch of folks laughed at/with me explaining that the same thing happened to them, and they wanted to crawl up into a ball and not move, and these four or five guys and one gal said that it would swiftly get better after a nights sleep, and if I could get some oxygen that would help too.   Those experienced folk diagnosed me with altitude sickness.  They were all in their twenties, so I didn't feel as vulenerable if those youngsters had what I was going thru, and it wasn't do to my age.  I landed a little after noon, and by the time I got to the hotel about 7 pm, I was 'dying'.  The hotel desk folks, just looking at me voluntered & asked if I had arrived in Cusco earlier that day, got me checked in quickly and asked if I would like some oxygen, that they recommended it, and I would feel better sooner if I did.  So after climbing into bed, one of the fellows set it up, even cleaned the O2 mask with alcohol before using it on me.  He ran it about 20 minutes, returned, and I fell asleep immediately, walking up an hour and a half later, not feeling great, but a heck of a lot better.  Haven't eaten much since, probably best on a queezy stomach.  So about 10p pm, I started realigning all the stuff in my suitcases and backpack, this time being ruthless, reducing 9.6 kilos from all the stuff I was lugging around, so that brand new small suitcase I had just purchased in Lima was going to be the container to haul about 20+ pounds back to Iowa.  The hotel desk folks will get me the price to ship it all back, by Monday morning.  How the weight grew to 'over weight surcharges' I don't know, I had even taken my suitcase to the accurate scales in the VA clinic, and it weighed 48.7 pounds, and the DSM airport scale read 49 lbs.  I only purchased two very light weight items as presents, so other than the six pounder new suitcase, I don't know how I got thirteen kilos of additional  of excess weight the airlines found to charge me for.  Ouch!!!  I sure didn't want to payoover weight charges on the remaining 45 flights.  So Marcia hopefully a suitcase will arrive on your doorstep, not too shortly, as I wanted the cheapest method of shipment.  So today I went on my tour of the Sacred Valley, saw four differentsites, and climbed half a mountain, the guide was great, he's about 40-ish, he stampers about runs up & down the mountain stairs finding out early or another of his 'team'.  He contradicts the guide books and history accounts, giving his reasons why, and makes comments more fully explaining the what, whys, whens....  one of the best guides on any tour I've ever taken.  He is an Incan, and even traces his heritage to one of three pre-incan peoples, and he was always correcting the Spanish pronunciation, his version as lots of clicks, and hard conconant sounds, again explaining where and why the old Spaniards screwed it up.  He said they always did the most romantic version of a story, the one that favored the Spanish point and the Catholic version, explaining why and where crosses and Catholic saints appeared on so many of the mountain & hilltops.  The missionary and soldiers wanted to prove that the Christian god was more powerful than the Incan religious story, so every where there was an Incan temple, a Catholic church went up in it's place (and of course completely destroying the Incan site.  Both criminals, or Incans with different philosophies or politics, as well as those being given as a sacrifice to the sun god... were killed.  The Incan didn't believe in prisons, the final solution--death was a solution with no appeals, and no expense for food, maintaining prisons, and paying guards... and they felt that the example of death was a great prevention example.   Also venditas, politics, and grudges could occure without any of the victims side of the story being told.  It took tremendous courage, so the common folk wouldn't oppose the that particular leaders action.  I climbed several mountain stairways, mostly with 12"  or taller risers.  As the say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are today's photos: