Blogs from Puno, Peru, South America - page 74

Hi there, Lorna here again! So...Arequipa was a cool place. Like Ali said, it was the first place that we started to experience alititude....although I think we were misguided in thinking it was the real thing....as we have sampled much more since! Did some sight seeing around Arequipa. In the morning we went to the Santa Catalina Convent, which was a fantasic place. In short, the convent has been established for many years - going back to when it was first set up, it was actually very corrupt, all these women went and became nuns and then had hundreds of servants to wait on them hand and foot! They ate and drank from ornate gold plates and cups and basically lived the life of riley. Then the pope came along and told them they had to ... read more

I arrived in Puno by bus from Cuzco at around 6.30am. The plan was to walk to the dock and then find a boat. Since the guide book I had said that boats leave at around 7.30am I did not have much time, when I was approached by a person offering a guided tour to the Islands I accepted, and soon the trip was all sorted. Our first stop was the Uros Islands. These are man made islands made out of reeds, with each Island having a few families living on it. The reeds feel quite bouncy under foot, so it feels somewhat like walking on a trampoline. Each of the houses is about the size of a garden shed, and many now have solar panels, the one we had a look inside had a stereo ... read more

Another early start, to take the long Orient Express train from Cusco to Puno - a journey of only 239 miles but which takes 10 hours across the high Andes, never dropping below 3,000m and sometimes going above 4,200m. Although 10 hours (and Lauren and I have spinning heads this evening from a day's jolting) is a long journey, it is a great one. You go through amazing mountain scenery, farmlands with Peruvians in traditional dress tilling the soil with oxen in traditional ways and waving as you pass, past markets with stall holders waving, past busy streets with tuk-tuks or equivalents. We speculated on how the two new members of our party (Irene and Gaby, joining us in two days) would have liked the trip had they joined us in Cusco. We decided Gaby would ... read more

Lake Titicaca Day Trip to the Highest Lake in South America and the 2nd Bigggest Lake Titicaca is the world's highest lake navigable to large vessels, lying at 12,500 feet (3,810 m) above sea level in the Andes Mountains of South America, astride the border between Peru to the west and Bolivia to the east. Titicaca is the second largest lake of South America (after Maracaibo). It covers some 3,200 square miles (8,300 square km) and extends in a northwest-to-southeast direction for a distance of 120 miles (190 km). It is 50 miles (80 km) across at its widest point. We spent the night on one of the Lakes islands of Amantani in a house with a local person and ejoyed the many festive highlights of that way of living. Lake titicaca is so big that ... read more

I thought Puno would be a good halfway-ish point between copacabana and cusco. I stayed one night, had a good one, taking advantage of the ´one free drink´ almost thrown at gringo´s passing by. In the morning I took a bicycle taxi down to the harbour to leave for the Isles Flotantes, the floating islands also known as the Uros. Still thoroughly enjoying Hugh Thompson´s ´the white rock´ a book I would highly recommend for anyone visiting this area. He (somewhat sarcastically) points out that the islands aren´t floating at all, in fact they are anchored to the bottom of the lake, and remain in place. The islands are made up of straw, weaved and placed so as to ´float´ atop the water. People live there, but not in the huts that they advertise to tourists, ... read more