wake-up bark!

One reason Kate (and Ariel and Lisa to a lesser extent) are feeling poorly is the combination of altitude (here in Puno we´re at about 13,000 feet) and not enough sleep. Peru is a hard-working country, and they start their day well before dawn. Consequently many of our days have started at 5:30 am... and not ended until, in some cases, the wee hours of the next day. (The days here, well south of the tropics, have just 10 daylight hours, so we have to make use of all of them.) We have had many days in a row, starting with the night before the last day of the trek, of less than 5 hours sleep. We have yet to sleep in a heated place, so add cold to the formula. On the bright side, we´ll be heading north from here, so cold should be less of a problem. At least, we hope to dispense with the hats and scarves during the day.

Several days ago we stayed in a hostal and needed to get up at the usual 5:30, so, as a backup to our own alarms, we left a wake-up request with the desk guy. At precisely 5:25, a dog began barking. I looked out the window, and he was barking directly at our door. Big German shepherd, very robust bark. He gave 4 series of 4 barks like this: Bark BARK bark bark. He then trotted off.

I said to Lisa,¨"Alarm dog. That´s a new one for me." As the clock changed to 5:30, I heard footsteps, then a quiet knock at the door. I said (in English, because I wasn´t awake enough to try Spanish), "We´re up!" whereupon the knocker walked away.

Now, it´s all probably a coincidence: the knocker probably awoke the barker. But for 5 minutes, at least, I thought Peru had alarm dogs.