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Machu Picchu , Peru with our baby girl!



 
 
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Old May 3rd, 2006, 10:11 PM posted to rec.travel.misc
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Default Machu Picchu , Peru with our baby girl!


Hi there fellow travelers! Long time no see..I've been spending some
quality time with the family, and by now you should know quality time
can only mean one thing: traveling!

Who said traveling with a child is difficult?

2 Months ago, My wife Karin and I decided to go back to where we
started off 10 years ago: Machu Picchu. Times have changed since then
and our personal situation has evolved as well. Since August 2004 we
are the proud parents of Edie Annemare, our by now 1,5 year-old
daughter. Edie is used to traveling, as our line of work pushes us
around the globe throughout the year, but we had never before taken her
to places too far off the beaten track, let alone high altitude.
Therefore we were a bit anxious to know if we would be doing the right
thing by bringing her along. We were basically weary of Altitude
Sickness, or "Soroche".

Soroche is caused by 2 main factors:

Lack of oxygen in the air:

The higher you go the less oxygen you will find per m3 of breathable
air. Therefore your lungs will obtain less of this existential gas per
each breath taken, while your brain and heart need the same amount.
Therefore you need to breath more often to get the same amount of
oxygen, which gives you the feeling of being "out of breath"
constantly.

Lower outside air pressure at higher altitudes:

Due to the fact that at 3,400m (10,000ft approx.) altitude there is the
same amount of meters/ft less air above your head and therefore less
air-pressure on your body then at 0m/ft. At sea-level your body has to
have built up a certain inside pressure, to withstand that outside
air-pressure. This is done through nitrogen bubbles in your
bloodstream. These bubbles have a certain size and strength as to
create an inner pressure that meets the outside pressure. Once you get
to a certain altitude (for me the barrier lies at 3,000m/9,000ft) very
quickly (for example in a plane), your body may have difficulties
adjusting itself to the sudden difference in outside pressure and for a
while (mostly a maximum of 24 hours) your inside pressure may be higher
than the outside air-pressure, causing a series of possible
discomforts, such as headache, dizziness, intestine unrest, etc. This
all has to do with the fact that your body tries to make the nitrogen
bubbles in your bloodstream smaller and readjust itself to the outside
pressure, but hasn't gotten there yet. Normally this is no big
problem and you will get over it within 24 hours.

After some research, it turned out that actually smaller children do
not or hardly suffer from this sickness, as their bodies tend to adjust
themselves much faster then those of grown people. So, we took the
plunge and it turned out to be a great experience. People ask: "why
would you do it at that age, when they do not have any recollection of
it later?", but we feel children are as susceptible to travel
experiences as they are to languages at that age; their mind is a
spunge and they will pick up a lot from a trip like this. Maybe they
will not remember much in the future, but at some level (I have no
medical proof of this of course, but it feels right and some of our
friends who traveled with small children confirm it) it will make an
impression, open up their mind, make them more open to the different
ways the world can present itself... Or at least so we hope...

Bottom line is, we had a great time, Edie as well, and we feel we can
take her along on many more of our trips, until she has come to the age
where it becomes necessary for her to be in school and with her
friends. It will give us a couple more years of traveling freedom and
we hope will open up our daughter's mind for the world. We sincerely
feel that getting to know different cultures and ways of living should
help in becoming a more tolerant person, and as far as tolerance goes,
one cannot start learning early enough.

You can see pics of our travel at my blog:
http://bart-cat-travel.blogspot.com/

Best regards from Buenos Aires!
Bart
http://www.cat-travel.com

 




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