Puno to Cuzco

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Yesterday we travelled from Puno to Cuzco, we left the hotel with another Gap group and headed out of Puno by local bus, what we were aware of was strkes, these occur quite often over here, this particular day the teachers were striking over a pay dispute with the government, and several teachers had been sacked over this,

So when we went to leave Puno we came to a blockade, seemed like the whole community had banded together with the teachers, the blockade comprised of 14 klms of rocks spread across the roads, to prevent any one travelling, we had to wait for the policia to walk ahead of the buses and remove the rocks from the road, as the protesters proceeded to put them back between the vehicles, occasionally we got out of the bus to clear the road ourselves so we could pass,

It seemed to be a quiet protest at first until they took objection to the stones being removed and then started to get quite violent, which reactivated the policia, and out came the tear gas and battons, we managed to get through this blockade un-scaithed after about 2 hours, and headed on our merry way till we got to the capital of Puno where thousands of protestors were marching, so we parked off the road and waited it out, this was a transport protest I found out later and if we had tried to pass the driver would have been attacked, we arrived in Puno 10 hours later. to a wonderful dinner in this fantastic restaruante called the witches garden www.witchesgarden.net. I had the best sleep last night and am off to explore Cuzco today.

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