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Published: October 14th 2016
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We arrived in the city of Puno late in the evening exiting the bus and lugging two bags up another hill to our hotel, we will only be here for one long day and are keen to make the most of it so we booked a car and driver and after a short delay due to a really loud festival we drove up the hillside and out of town. After about half an hour we took the turn off to Sillustani encountering some lovely little mud walled farmsteads generally made up of four or five buildings one of which had a guanaco, llama and an alpaca out the front.
A little further down the road we came upon a wetlands that had flamingo and Andean geese feeding amongst wading cattle while the brooding stone Chullpas (funerary towers) crowned the hill sides. The original towers were used by the ancient Cholla people to preserve food and to keep bodies fresh, with the Inca conquest the towers where improved upon being built of finally crafted stone blocks and used specifically for entombing the rich. On the other side of the hills was the impressive volcanic Lago Umayo with its central island Vicuna
Puno
On the shores of Titicaca reserve.
Just prior to leaving Ruth had a bad turn and we had to head back to Puno of arrival I booked her a room and put her to bed, an hour or so later I went out to the reed Islands of Puno. The boat navigates a deep channel out into lake Titicaca on either side is shallow water perhaps a metre deep where the reeds grow, the islands are floating platforms anchored to the lake bottom positioned along that deep channel. Apparently there are about eighty, many of which have dogs, cats guinea pigs also living on them, a couple looking more solid and have a football pitch and hospitalon them. Although the whole experience was very contrived the villagers seemed legitimately friendly and nice.
Shortly after returning from this trip Ruth and I boarded the hop on hop off bus for the almost mythical city of Cuzco arriving after a reasonably uncomfortable nights bus travel at our hotel located in the heights above the main square. On arrival we discovered an elderly Canadian male lying dead in the foyer apparently the victim of severe altitude sickness, later we discovered that he had brought his 80
year old wife to Peru for her birthday and died the day before, the poor women is still here by herself and never got to visit Machu Picchu.
The hotel gave us free early check in due primarily to the tragedy we believe and we went straight to bed for several hours. We then went out and explored what must be one of South America's most attractive old towns, Cuzco once the Inca capital is blessed with some amazing colonial era religious architecture and a maze of back streets to explore. We are still having altitude sickness issues so decided to lay around and do nothing all day a shame really but it was necessary as the next day we would make our pilgrimage to Machu Picchu.
Getting to Agua Callientes the drop off point for Machu Picchu is a complex and expensive proposition, a two hour bus or car journey to the pretty village of Ollantaytambo is followed by a pleasant if horrendously expensive train ride to the town which is little more than service centre for the 7000 tourists who pass through everyday and as such is a soulless. We decided to stay there so we
Funerary tower
Despoiled by Spanish treasure hunters could access Machu Picchu before the day tripping crowds arrived and so we arrived at one of the world's greatest archaeological sites quite early in the morning and although there were a lot of people there we still enjoyed the place immensely. Our guide was excellent, the weather was kind and we had a fantastic time at the site, by 1230pm we were on our way back to town were we had a meal while we awaited our return train to Ollantaytambo.
The trip back to Cusco was problem free we arrived at our hotel around 8pm, the next day we would visit the Inca site at Chinchero and it's interesting colonial church and then the wonderful agricultural terraces at Moray which were stunning later that night after a Mexican meal we boarded our bus for Arequippa.
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
We love Peru
Nice photo