Thankfully missing our original bus to Puno, we had another day to just relax and recover in Cuzco. ended up concocting a little fib for our hotel receptionist (who relayed the story to the bus company via phone) that i got really sick the night before and just couldn't handle a 10 hour bus ride to puno in my condition...and the company was super cool with it and let us on the following days bus with our previous days tickets. Score!
With no agenda for the first time on the trip we just wandered the cobbled streets of cuzco and ended up running into a couple from Belgium we met on the trek. We all talked about our travels over some stiff piscos then Jimmy and i Took off for dinner where we finally tried the alpaca! It was just ok in my book, nothing special, but it is nice to try new things.
kid running away from home, cuzco.
our favorite market girl had a crush on jimmy :)
notice creepy/cool head candle in background?
The next morning we caught an early bus to puno. Thinking we could just sleep on the ride, we got a rude awakening...Ugh. We had inadvertently booked a bus that came with a complete tour! This might be a joy to most people, but our so-called tour guide was one hot mess. He rambled on incessantly in Spanish then gave a half-as*ed English translation all the while using a microphone that was extremely distorted and muffled...if you are familiar with Spanish tv game shows (how could you not be!?) you could say he looked and acted like the host of sabado gigante. We made multiple stops in small rural towns with not much going on and Saw some mediocre ruins, especially after seeing machu picchu. On a positive note, at least I snagged some great local clay vases and bowls at one of the stops.
small town
whipped cream for breakfast to the schoolchildren
Once you learned how to tune out mr. Sabado gigante the ride went much better, especially looking at the stunning scenery we were passing. We passed locals working in massive salt flats, open country with tons of birds and burros, llama farms, and more snowy mt. peaks. Being On a road heading towards Bolivia (puno/lake titicaca borders bolivia), the altitude climbed and the temp. dropped big time. my ass be freezing when we got out at the last couple of stops.
All of the homes along the way were constructed out of these types of mud bricks. We saw a lot of people actually making and drying the bricks. I'm curious how long they actually hold up in the rain and wind as we saw half the homes in shambles. One cool/odd thing, is how the locals advertise in these parts. They don't have billboards or posters or banners. instead they paint their ads or messages on the sides of their mud homes or fences...most messages seem to be political in nature with the names and slogans of the recent presidential candidates splashed across them.
keiko por presidente (she lost)
wanderers
highway hustler
school in the middle of nowhere
roadside juice sellers
cool old building #1
cool old building #2
We passed the city of juliaca which is rather bleak and quite bizarre. On the outskirts of the city, It's like they built the area up with hopes/plans of droves of people coming in and instead it is a total ghost town. Streets full of unfinished brick homes and businesses with tons of rebar sticking out the tops. Something about it reminded us of some Asian countries we have passed through...just a dirtier and scarier looking place than what we have seen in Peru so far.
desolate unfinished juliaca
i'm sleeping like a zombie, not dead!
The bus dropped us at the station at dark where we had a driver waiting to take us to our hotel. Went out on the town and decided that Puno is pretty non-descript actually! It doesn't have the charm of other cities we had been to and frankly we got a bit bummed...because we had missed our original bus and got pressed for time, we were no longer able to do the home stay with villagers on the islands in lake titicaca, which is why we came to puno in the first place. I think the fact that it was freezing and pouring rain made puno much less appealing as well. we made the best of it hiding out in various dark candle-lit watering holes and playing a lot of jenga, pool and fusball.
jenga playing in puno
giddy i'm about to topple it over
If I had to guess at why puno was so different it might be it's proximity to Bolivia? It just seemed to lack a true identity. A lot of the women wore the trademark bowler hats (popular on bolivian women), food was a bit different and it was just overall grittier. Like most of peru, puno does like their dark lit bars cranking out the loudest, ear drum popping terrible rock music. Think shakira, 80's hair bands and latino 'hits'.
moto-taxi ride
Rise and shine time, we headed out to the pier on lake titicaca to catch a boat to uros, or the Floating reed islands. Uros is a series of 45 or so small islands all created by piles and piles of floating reeds. that's it! These islands used to be mobile and were built for defense back in the day, but now they are weighted down so they don't float away. Most islands have several little reed huts for families to live in and now the main island has a reed hotel and restaurant. The islands come equipped with reed boats, reed watchtowers, reed beds and anything else you can make with...you guessed it, reeds!!! you have to be careful as some spots are rotten and your foot could go right through the island and into the lake!
uros islands
islander women
ground is all reeds!
Lake titicaca itself is beautiful...white puffy clouds in a blue sky reflecting off the dark blue water. Tons of wildlife, locals fishing and little pigs rooting around the reeds dot the landscape. I only wish we could have explored more of it and gone to another island for our home stay.
lake titicaca (it was freezing)
fisher folk
water gathering
We were forewarned uros had become a tad commercialized (agreed) with the influx of tourists, and the fact the villagers called one of their reed boats a 'Ferrari' made that more apparent, but it was still a nice semblance of how things used to be on the islands. Minus the sudden and crazy hail storm, I think it is def. worth a 3$ boat ride and a couple hours of your time.
ride the 'ferrari'
i got guilted into buying a mobile off her
rad hair accessories
pretty nail...on a man.
bowler hats
another island
cleaning some trout for lunch
recyclers
adios uros!
Next morning, Cabbed an hour back to juliaca to catch our last flight back to where it all began, lima! This time we stayed in the neighborhood of barranco and it really shed a better light on lima than our first nights. Just seemed less touristy than miraflores and more a 'locals only' area if a tad bit on the trendy side.
Our hotel was super hip and in the cutest updated 70's era neighborhood. We found a great spot for our last lunch and had a huge pitcher of chicha (i miss soooo much), green corn tamales and my good ole aji de gallina...bueno!
chicha!!!
cool grafitti, lima
Our last night (boo!) we bar hopped a bit to get our last tastes of pervuian cervesas and Stumbled upon a great lounge playing some awesome music (finally!) near the beach. It was so cool, we decided this was the spot to end it all...Had our final meal of causas (cold potato salad dish topped with massive shrimp) and these potato balls in a yummy sauce. Best cocktail of the trip was had here...coca sours! How did i not try you until now!? So fragrant, so sweet, so strong! Spent many hours talking over our sours about how great Peru is (everyone must visit!) and what an amazing adventure we had just shared the past few weeks.
after hitting the sack for a few hours, our bleary eyes took the long road home via cab rides and two flights...at least we talked our way into first class! We arrived to sf and when our little ari greeted us at the airport I was soooo excited to just be home! We love travel more than anything but there is nothing like being home after being on the go in a foreign country for a few weeks!
Thanks for following us making some great memories across Peru! Already can't wait for the next trip!
El final.
last night in peru
