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Published: November 10th 2006
Puno
At the top of Lago de TiticacaSo after Machu Picchu we rolled back to Cusco and decided to go south to Lake Titicaca (Tee Hee!) and LaPaz. Time for another bus, oh joy, but only seven hours to a town on the lake called Puno a very quaint little town by the waterside. We had a couple of beers in the evening and consequently I politely refrained to get out of bed for our tour around the lake and the floating islands of Uros. Whilst I spent a long hard day in bed Steve went with Mark and took some pictures. He said it was pretty cool, the islands are made of reed mats, loads of them, laid on top of each other. Pretty much everything was made of reeds, boats, houses, churches, restaurants, cars, tvs....ok there´s no tvs but they do have electricity thanks to nifty solar panels everywhere. The floor actually gives a little when you walk and the people that live there find it hard to walk on dry land because their legs haven´t developed properly. Needless to say I was thouroughly refreshed when I got out of bed at 5pm when they returned and we had some dinner and turned in for an
Floating islands of Uros
Good, apparently........ early night! Next day another bus (12 hours for the statistic fans) further down, crossing the border into Bolivia and on to La Paz. It is the highest capital city in the world (I think...) and it´s set in a huge crater type valley and surrounded by mountains so it was pretty impressive as we drove down into it. We found a pleasant 1950´s themed hotel near the center and went out and about round the city planning to head straight out the next day to make sure we had enough time to get back to Lima. The next morning we went back to the bus station only to find that there was a transport strike and a miners strike on in La Paz and we would be lucky to escape as there were buses blocking all the roads!! This was on Mon and we were flying out of Lima to Sao Paulo on Weds night - oh sh*t! Well, there wasn´t a lot we could do but go back to our hotel and wait. We turned the tv on and there was pictures of taxi drivers being dragged from their cars and beaten for daring to drive during a
Lake Titicaca
Bluer than something extremely blue transport strike, nice! It also said that the strike was indefinate so there was no telling when we would be able to get out of La Paz. Luckily when we returned to the bus station the next day we were pleased to find out that the strike had been settled and we could make our merry way back to Lima, a 24 hour bus ride so we should just make our flight and we treated ourselves to the 'emperor' class for that extra bit of comfort. Eight hours into a reasonably pleasant journey we pull into a bus station and strangely sit waiting for two hours which upon investigation turns out to be because the steering on our bus is broken! We then wait another hour for a replacement bus which is most definately NOT emperor class, in fact it is as far away as you can get. We travelled on this bus for the next 10 hours through the mountains where it was about 0 degrees with no heating just handkerchief sized felt blankets! One more bus change in Arequipa, a revolt by the local travellers and 9 hours more travelling we eventually reach Lima at 1030PM, an hour
Lake Crossing
A bus on a barge, have you seen that before??!! to get to the airport, no problem. Unfortunately on this last leg, Steve thought it would be prudent to check if we needed visas for Brazil and yup you guessed it, the curse of the Canadian passport struck again. So Steve flew on his own to Sao Paulo and luckily Mark let me in when I went back to his place for 5 more days in Lima!!
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