Blogs from Puno, Peru, South America - page 8

Freddy met us at the hotel and we had a cup of coffee together as we discussed the rest of our trip. He said he would be "following" us until we got to Iquitos. He took us to our tourist bus and we left Cusco behind. Our tour guide, Coco, spent the first 30 minutes telling us about what we would see and then would break-in along the way adding tidbits as we passed villages or landmarks. This would be a 9-1/2 hour luxury bus with five scheduled stops. A short distance from Cusco, we passed through the small town of Chuta, famous for its one-foot round loaves of bread. Tanya, our hostess, gave all of us a sample which was slightly sweet and very good. There were many women selling these along the roadside. Our ... read more

5-7 May 2014 Monday through Wednesday. We were again faced with another early start of a day...5:40 am with a rendezvous with the luxury bus that would he take us to Puno on Lake Titicaca departing at 7:20 am. Our tour agent used Wonder bus, a competitor to the Inca Express. We would have five stops along the way, arriving in Puno about 5 pm. The first was the town of Andahuaylillas where the interior of the 17th century church is compared to the Sistine Chapel, with paintings of the Last Judgement and extensive wall decorations. While interesting and different, I've seen the Sistine Chapel and this is no Sistine Chapel. Next we stopped in Raqchi at the Inca ruins known as the Temple of God Wiracocha, who was the supreme god. This city was on ... read more

Days 56 -57 we had a fun start to the day when our group left our hotel in a convoy of 2 man peddle powered cyclos for a quick trip down to the port for our tour of Lake Titicaca. We were joined by our guide, John, who is an expert in the history & culture for these regional communities. We started out by slow motor boat in dead calm & warm conditions although the water temperature is a constant cold 9-10 deg. After a short cruise our first stop off was to visit the Uros floating islands. The Uros natives originally moved north to Puno thousands of years ago & were happily settled there until the Spanish arrived & who needed a constant supply of slave labour to mine the rich lodes of silver that ... read more

27 February 2014 Thursday - Puno, Peru We did not expect much of Puno as the guidebooks and internet sites didn’t have much good to say about it, probably because it doesn’t have a clutch of magnificent Spanish colonial Catholic Churches or a bunch of museums or fabulous squares. We were, however, pleasantly surprised on our initial walkabout. One of the criteria we use to make an initial assessment of a town or city is if there are more interesting-looking restaurants than we will have the time to visit during our stay there. Accordingly, Puno looks very promising and under-rated by the travel guides. We had finally arrived at around 2am. We had met a young Belgian couple, Heyvaert and Bernard, who were also on a long-term Latin American journey, while waiting to board the bus ... read more

Puno en provinsby i Peru - den ligger ned til den enorme Titikaka sø og som ofte er udgangspunkt for ture til de mange øer. Lidt billeder fra byen, den klassiske park foran Catadralen, smuk gadebelægning, udsigtspunkt med den mægtige Condor, det lokale kødmarked, lidt coca the og ikke mindst udsigt til håndværkere fra Hotellets restaurant - de arbejder i 6 sals højde i gummistøvler og uden diverse sikkerheds foranstaltninger !!!! - Tror nok lige at arbejdstilsynet kunne få travlt her i Peru. Titikaka er verdens højst beliggende sø- Søen strækker sig ind i Bolivia og har et areal paa 8300km" og ligger i 3800 meters højde. Lyset er fantastisk og luften er meget tynd. Titikakka søen har i alt 41 øer, hvoraf nogle er de berømte sivøer, her har Uros folket boet i århundreder. Det ... read more