Goodbye Peru

After leaving Cusco, we caught a bus to Puno, the largest town on the Peruvian shores of Lake Titicaca (3820m) to spend some time, explore the lake and the surrounding region.

Our bus left at the reasonable time of 8:30am and was scheduled to take 6 hours to take us to Puno. Great, we thought, we'll grab some biscuits and bananas and have a late lunch by the lake in Puno. Not so great... turns out that our bus driver couldn't find third gear and so when we were 5 hours into the trip and we passed the half-way point, we knew we were in trouble. Hungry and grumpy at this point, the bus didn't even stop for us to buy some "chicolo con queso" from the ladies shouting at us at every pause. When we finally stopped at the local Juliaca airport for us to change busses, we were very relieved (especially after picking us some food at the airport). To make a long story short, we finally arrived in Puno at 5pm, 3 hours after we were supposed to. Recommadation: don't use the San Luis bus company!

Puno was ok, a little more basic and less attractive than Cusco but our hostel (Inka's Rest) was great and provided us with the opportunity to grab some much needed R&R after the last hectic few days.

The only tour that we managed was a boat trip to the floating islands in the Lake Titicaca which were built and habitated by the Uros, a pre-Inca people who have survived and kept many of their customs since that time. I can't say that we particularly enjoyed the visit as it seemed a little like a human zoo at times and there was a lot of pressure to buy some souvineers from them, but it was certainly a very different experience than anywhere else that we have visited so far.

We are back in Puno now and we found out this morning that there is a bus strike which means that we now won't be able to do our trip to the Coca Canyon as planned. So now we're going to head to Copacabana (in Boliva) a few days earlier instead.

We've had some real high and low points in Peru. The stay in the Amazon jungle is definately one of the highlights of the entire trip so far and the hike to see the ruins at Pisaq will stand out as one of my favourite days. However getting ill in Cusco and the bus trip to Puno will also be in the bottom list. We have enjoyed our time here and we are now looking forward to heading South and experiencing Bolivia and most of all, Argentina.