We are in
Putre in Northern Chile and we are making a commercial. There is not much in Putre* other than some streets, some clothes made out of
alpaca, shoes made out of alpaca, tiny alpacas made out of alpaca and a restaurant with alpaca chop suey on the menu.
Putre is quite high up in the air, and being high up in the air can bring on
altitude sickness. Because we are lily-livered bottom dwellers, we are not used to the altitude, and more to the point, there is no way of predicting whether you will get altitude sickness or not until you get there, so we have taken 'precautions' before we leave. I have
Diamox, as do the others, but we all have slightly different prescriptions and spend a great many minutes discussing them; I also have cortisone (which apparently stops your brain from blowing up); we each have a bag of coca leaves and some of us have even stopped halfway up the road to Putre to drink chachacoma tea, pausing from our hungry sucking only to wonder why the Nestlé refrigerator says "Savoury" on the outside when there is ice-cream on the inside of it.
But preventative tea and drugs are to no avail, for on my first night in the height I feel sick, and dizzy, and very, very, very tired, and cannot walk for more than 5 steps without panting like a hot dog. I go to bed and sleep for 12 hours, but before I sleep I lie in bed panting like someone who is running very fast. It is strange and magical, and I sleep the sleep of the not-quite-dead.
The next day I am recovered, although still panting, and we go to the 'set' and we do work. But then a doctor comes into the place we are shooting and suddenly I am hyper-pantilating.
"That's not a real doctor. They're shooting the South American version of 'Days of our Lives' down the road, and he's wandered on to the wrong set", says someone, and they are almost right because he is tall with curled hair and flashing black eyes so he looks like a soap dish. But in truth he is a real doctor, and he puts our fingers in his little machines and tells us if we are OK or not, and he has eyedrops if we need them, and he puts plasters on our cuts and hands out isotonic drinks and walks around with his big toolbox on display for everyone to see.
Two days later, we go even higher, to 4,400 metres. We are in a place called
Parinacota, which is very beautiful, but I do not think its beauty is why my heart is beating at one million bpm. I am frowning and the doctor says, "OK, you OK?", and I say, "my heart is beating very fast!", and he makes me put my finger in his little machine, and then he says, "you must sit down, and not walk or run, and tonight you must have red wine. This way, you will be better soon."
Result!
* If par hasard you are going there, the best hotel in Putre is apparently the
Terrace Lodge. We stayed in
Hotel Quantati, which was much much nicer than this link says. Of the other hotels in Putre, which is tiny teeny, one has beds that are the shape of bananas and heaters that light up the whole room with their red light, and the other one is run by a woman who looks exactly like a llama. Oh, and
this restaurant is actually and literally brilliant, and not far away are places that look like this:
This tiny pack of tiny post-it notes provides me with nothing but non-stop pleasure all day long. 
