Cusco to Puno and the Night Before

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Last night was pretty fun yet also pretty crazy. Being as though it was St Patty’s day our hostel had some live music and green beer for everyone to enjoy. Brett and I met up with two girls that we met at Macchu Picchu, one was Peruvian but lives in San Diego and the other was American living in Philly. They were both in the Navy together and their names were Marylin and Whitney respectively. We met them at their hotel and then came back to our hostel to hear the band play. We stayed for a few beers then went out to the discoteca to do some dancing. They were really nice girls and we had a great time. We went to the same bar that Mayra and I had been to the night before and everyone remembered me and were giving me discounts on drinks and preferential treatment which was pretty cool. Also basically everyone I talked to that day about Mayra knew her and said she was pretty crazy and liked to cause problems and fight with people. Sounds about right. I was fairly sure that I would see her that night and since the events of the previous night had left a sour taste in my mouth I wasn’t sure what to think. Sure enough I saw her at the bar and she was another guy and there was a scene. She was upset with me for some reason! I honestly think that the achohol has a lot to do with the way in which this whole situation went down. After that we left the bar and went back to the hostel to get some sleep since we had to catch our bus to Puno the next morning. I woke up to a nasty message from Mayra and I couldn’t really understand what the hell she was so upset about so I just wrote her back and told her I hoped we could still be friends considering I didn’t think I did anything wrong. We got on our bus to Puno at 1130a and I took a Xanax and resolved to put the whole mess behind me. The bus ride was about 7.5 hours from Cusco to Puno and we stopped a few times at various little cities and locations along the way. At some of the places we stopped there would be people selling things to the folks on the bus and they’d toss up the items to the window and you’d toss down the money to them. Brett asked for a piece of bread and this lady tossed him up a whole loaf of freshly baked bread! It was hilarious. At one point a lady got on the bus with a huge cart full of food and started slicing meat off this unknown animal leg and serving it to people, though I was hungry I did not partake in this little morsel of goodness haha. Most of the scenery was pretty breathtaking; I have some solid pics on my iPod. The antiplano is the region which we drove through and which we’re in now in Puno, mountainous and arid. We are even higher up here than we were in Cusco! We passed through some very industrial towns along the way and it surprised me that for a town of nearly 300,000 people, most of the roads in the city were dirt! There were people all about the sidewalks, some working, some enjoying Friday night in city that seemed very far removed from the real world, whatever that means anymore since many of the things I have seen thus far seem to be removed from the “real world”. We finally arrived in Puno around 730p and found ourselves a taxi to the hostel we had reserved. The taxi driver was a tour guide as well and filled us in on where to go eat as well as how much a tour of Lake Titicaca and the floating islands would cost. We got to our hostel and we were pretty sure we were the only ones there! Haha. It is small and quaint and very chill, though it’s located on a fairly large street and there are lots of cars and noise from passersby. Still, not too bad for 8 bucks a night and a hot shower. We ate dinner at a little place on the pedestrian walk they call it; we both had alpaca which we hadn’t tried yet. It was very tender and delicious, we were satisfied. We came back to the hostel and fell asleep quickly after a long, taxing day.

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