we begin

Yes, I really dressed like that. Ok, while moving I took the Buff off my nose and mouth because I needed the oxygen but the Buff protected me from the sun and the insects. I sprayed the bottom of the brim of the hat with permethrin so it would protect me from the insects as well as the sun. The shiny gold thing is housing for the GoPro. The shiny silver thing is a Capture Clip that was great for training hikes but .... I lost the tripod clip part of it the previous Sunday, probably in the convent in Arequipa. It is fantastic, I highly recommend it as a convenient way to carry your camera and have it easily accessible...unless you lose the tripod clip - because it has a safety mechanism that only allows it to take their tripod clip thing. The hose and bladder made drinking water extremely convenient. 

The first day was pretty easy although it would have been nice to have more oxygen - but we did see some people coming the opposite direction, giving up. Some companies apparently do not include some preliminary days of acclimation so people fly into Cusco and then go hiking the next day. Not a good idea. 

I would like to give thanks to the goddess Imodium for making this day possible. (Since this is a back blip, the owner of the company that provided the walking tour of Cusco wrote, requesting a review, and I let him know his included dinner made us sick. He offered to compensate us and I asked that he never take anyone to that restaurant again. He agreed.)

Interesting thing I learned during this trip - how did fewer than 200 Spanish men defeat the Incan empire? There were hundreds of thousands of people here. They could have defeated 200 men who took three minutes to load their guns between firing. The Spanish made allies with the local groups that the Incans had conquered. The local groups looked at the Spanish as potential saviors and only later realized that they had made a very bad deal and were worse off than under the Incans.

In addition, the Incans were coming off of a civil war because the ruling Inca had not selected one of his sons to succeed him (it did not automatically go to the eldest, it went to the most competent) when he died. The brothers warred. The empire was weakened.

The disease the Spaniards brought was just icing. The main factor is that local groups allied with them, fought for them, and then were subjugated by them. 

The Incans, unlike the Spanish, appreciated and adopted the knowledge of the groups they conquered and disbursed their knowledge throughout the empire. The sophistication of the architecture and irrigation and agriculture! They had incredible records and were able to manage the "tax" paid for in labor as well as everything else, with a record keeping system that used rope, not writing.