Not a good night

I was strong and went back to the hostel after that last post, about 10pm. Not even that late to bed. Woke up about 2:30am and just couldn't get back to sleep. I kept trying but felt short of breath and it made me feel a bit stressed and then I had to get up to wander around the room feeling worried. Repeat ad infinitum. About 4am I noticed the room didn't have a window, just a skylight, so I got dressed and went out for a quick pace about in front of the hostel to see if it would help. It did a bit but not much.

About the only good thing to come out of this is that I was able to have a hot shower at 5 or 6am, I hadn't had one last night or the night before as the water was cold.

Felt a bit better once I got out of the hostel properly this morning and it was daylight etc. Still not feeling totally great but definitely better.

At the bus terminal now, bought a ticket OK. There are loads of buses to Arequipa. I felt a bit of a wuss asking if there was a toilet on the bus and saying I'd find another company when there wasn't, but I'm not taking any chances right now. It then turned out the 8am bus does have a toilet, so I'm on that as expected. (The 7:30am stops three times, apparently. If I felt 100% that would be enough but although I don't have any real problems in that area right now, I don't want any additional source of stress. I think my bad night was almost entirely 'psychological' and so I don't want to be on the bus thinking "oh fuck, I hope I don't need to go")

I am going to see how I feel and maybe stop in Arequipa tonight and sacrifice the room I've already paid for in Nazca. But I hope it will be OK, and let's face it, it's not exactly hard work sitting on a bus, assuming I start to feel better.

I think the shortness of breath thing when I was in bed is just the mild occasional thing I've had with the altitude, but last night I was getting worked up about it instead of just forgetting about it, so it was a sort of vicious circle.

Arequipa is supposed to be about 2500m asl so I am finally getting back down to reasonable altitude. Nazca is even lower, well under 1000m if memory serves.

Oh, it was 20 sols for the ticket (vs 15 for the cheaper no-bog bus) but you then have to queue up to pay a 1 sol embarcation tax at a separate booth and get a sticker on your ticket. Maybe I'm being unfair but this seems fucking stupid, why not just tax the bus company 1 sol per ticket sold and they can then put their price up by 1 sol. I suppose maybe the way they do it maybe requires less 'infrastructure' but it's so naff.

As in Bolivia, the bus station is full of people shouting out names of destinations in a probably futile attempt to attract custom to their ticket desks. It's a bit disconcerting.

Oh, random observation - a single railway line runs through the middle of Puno, right past the end of the dead-end street my hostel (Inka's Rest, FWIW) is on. It appears in reasonable condition to my inexpert eye but I assume trains run very infrequently if at all, as the track seems a favourite place for street vendors to set up.