Robb and Sue's Excellent Adventure: Puno and Lake Titicaca

The morning of Wednesday April 4th was clear and cool with the promise of a good day for travelling. One of the real quirks of this trip has been that on most of the days we are travelling, the weather has been less than ideal, often cloudy and sometimes rainy. I guess if we have to have inclement weather it’s best to have it when we are stuck on a bus. But it seemed that today we would have excellent weather for the scenic trip in front of us.

Oscar pulled up behind a large tourist bus parked at the curb outside a small travel agency and we said our good-byes and thanks for his transportation services and interesting discussions over the past three days. An agent standing beside the bus, was checking off names on a clipboard and when we told him “Palmer” he said our names weren’t on the list. We insisted we had a reservation but the fellow just said there was no record of us at all. Luckily there were two remaining seats on the bus, so we paid our money and climbed on board, sitting in the very last row.

We had taken a similar tourist bus when we had traveled to Puerto Barrios from Guatemala City, so we weren’t surprised to learn there was a guide on board who provided a commentary throughout the trip, and a couple of “hostesses” who served coffee and water a few times. Our guide did his commentary in both Spanish and English and his first dialogue concerned our route and plan for the trip. We had read that the bus to Puno takes about 6 hours, so we were dismayed when we heard that it would be 10 hours before we got to Puno around 5:30 p.m. It seems that this bus was a real tourist bus, as it stopped along the way at a number of tourist sites. The guide on the bus doubled as a tour guide at these various attractions. Of course the tours involved payment of an extra fee, but we were so “toured out” by this time that we declined and said we would just hang around the bus at these stops. Anyway, what we thought was to be an express service, turned out to be a milk run to Puno.

The bus pulled out of Cusco on schedule at 7:30 and we were soon motoring along the surprisingly good road heading south. The early morning sunshine didn’t hold unfortunately and we had periods of cloudiness and some rain as the day wore on. We initially passed through some green rolling hills, along the course of a rushing river, but soon we climbed higher to the “alto plano” or high planes of the Andes. The land was flat and quite bleak as it stretched to the towering snow-capped Andes in the distance. We were well over 12,000 ft as we traversed the highlands and the treeless land was only occasionally dotted with small plots of farmland. From time to time we encountered small villages, their mud-colored adobe huts looking very drab and cold. We saw a few people in the fields and also others selling goods wherever the bus stopped for a tour or for a photo opportunity, but it was obvious that this part of Peru (like everywhere but the cities I guess) is very sparsely populated. There were also cattle and alpacas grazing in places, but for the most part the land looked pretty desolate and uninviting, the only flashes of color being the sporadic bill boards for some political candidate or a sign advertising a local cola painted on the side of a building, or, of course, the bright, multi-colored fabrics worn by the local women and on sale at roadside stalls.

After enduring several hours of stops along the way where Sue and I wandered around while others on the bus took tours of still more Inca ruins, colonial churches, etc., we finally approached the town of Julicaca, about an hour’s drive to the north of Puno. We would be returning to this city in a few days for our flight to Arequipa, as there is no airport at Puno. As we passed through Juliaca, which our guide described as an “important business centre in southern Peru”, we were presented with a scene of utter ugliness. We both agreed that Juliaca was one on the most “unlovely” places we have ever encountered. Most of the side streets running off the main road were just dirt. Recent rains had turned them into quagmires of mud and huge puddles. Large trucks were parked randomly along the highway as if their drivers had just abandoned them. Small three-wheeled taxis tried to make their way through the muddy streets as did people on foot. And to complete the unsightly scene, the whole city looked as if it had been left only partially constructed. All the buildings were built of red brick with no exterior plaster, siding or paint of any kind. And two out of every three had bare rebar sticking up above the walls as if there had been a second storey planned but never built. The whole place gave the impression of a helter-skelter work-in-progress by builders who cared not the slightest for any hint of attractiveness in their product. And the grey afternoon and waning light, coupled with these most ugly buildings, certainly gave the place a depressing feeling, and we were glad that our bus hardly slowed as we made our way through this dump of a city.

An hour later we were dropping down a steep hill into Puno on the shores of Lake Titicaca. As we passed through the outskirts, Puno appeared to be about the same “quality” as Juliaca, and the steady rain didn’t do much for our already depressed spirits. But by the time we reached the bus terminal down near the lake, the buildings at least seemed to be “finished” if not terribly attractive.

For some reason when planning our trip, I had had a premonition about Puno as being something of a dive, and had pre-booked a room at the best hotel in town for the three nights we planned to stay here. The Casa Andina Private Collection was a small hotel on the shores of the lake a couple of kilometers outside the town and from the website had appeared to be very modern and comfortable. The rate for a room was $135USD per night, but I had actually got a great deal of $85 per night by booking and paying in advance through Orbitz, an on-line discount travel agency. So, you can imagine our consternation when upon checking in, the manager took us aside and told us there had been a “problem” with our reservation. He said they had only just received it from Orbitz, though I had made and paid for the reservation 3 months previously, and that the hotel was full. (My guess is they had overbooked, or needed our room for a tour group and were just making up a story about our reservation.) Anyway, he said they could move us to a hotel just down the road a kilometer which was just as nice as the Andina. It seems we had no choice in the matter so a nice young lady escorted us in a taxi to the Posada del Inca, which had a nice large room overlooking the lake for us. Although it wasn’t the same luxury quality as the Andina, we were actually quite comfortable there, especially with the in-room heater (which many cheaper hotels don’t have) to ward off the cold night temperatures. But the real highlight to this particular tale, was the fact that the Andina hotel manager said to us that he realized we were being inconvenienced and to make it up to us he would like to invite us to dinner at their restaurant, “on the house”. So, at 7:00, the same young lady showed up at the Posada del Inca and drove us back to the Andina for dinner. And as she led us to the restaurant, she said we were in for a real treat…and as it turned out, she was right.

The restaurant was the best in Puno and no doubt one of the best in all of southern Peru. We were seated next to a log fire burning brightly in the fireplace at a table set with pressed linen and silver. The manager had told us to have anything we wanted from the menu, including wine, so for the first time on this “budget trip”, we splurged on a great restaurant meal. We ordered a bottle of fine Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon which tasted wonderful after being without a taste of wine since we had visited Michael and Sue in Costa Rica. Susan decided not to have a starter, but I opted for the alpaca carpaccio, a wonderful plate of thinly-sliced, raw alpaca loin, in a marinade of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, topped with freshly shaved parmesan. Absolutely wonderful! We then both had rack of local lamb served with a blueberry and mint sauce, vegetables and potatoes. Delicious! And we both had a real treat…dessert, something we never had with our evening meal. I had chocolate mousse while Susan indulged in a caramelized fruit dish. The meal would have cost nearly $100USD, an amount which was about 10 times what we usually spent for dinner! So, our little mix up with the hotel booking resulted in the “silver lining” of having the best meal of the whole trip…gratis.

The next day we decided to just take it fairly easy and hang around the hotel and Puno. We began with a tour of the El Yavari which was moored at the end of a Jetty just outside out hotel. The history of this iron ship is truly fascinating. The El Yavari was built in Birmingham in 1862, subsequently dismantled into 1382 pieces, none of which could weigh more than 400 lbs, and shipped to the port of Arica on the Pacific coast of Peru. Then for the next six years, trains of mules each carrying one piece of the ship (thus the 400 lb limit), made their way over the Andes to Puno. The ship was reconstructed in Puno and was launched on Christmas day 1870 as a petrol and war ship for the navy to be used in its territorial skirmishes with Bolivia which shares Lake Titicaca with Peru. This steam-powered vessel gave birth to Lake Titicaca’s epithet as the world’s highest navigable lake, at nearly 12,000 ft. Today the El Yavari has been restored to its original condition (although with a new Volvo diesel engine) and there are plans to convert it to a tour ship which will once again ply the waters of Lake Titicaca, though this time on a peaceful mission.

Later that morning, we walked into town and explored the central part of Puno. There wasn’t really much to see other than the central square and main shopping street, Jiron Lima, with its smattering of tourist shops, restaurants and Internet cafes. We spent a couple of hours “blogging” and then headed back to the hotel.

We returned to town that evening for dinner at a place along the main street. It was here that Susan decided to try the famous Peruvian dish of “cuy” (guinea pig). She asked the waiter for it to be served “sin cabeza” (without the head). She was presented with the flattened and deep fried carcass splayed out across a large plate, its little legs reminiscent of small chicken thighs, protruding out to the sides. After she tried to attack the bony meat with knife and fork, the waiter advised her to pick it up with her fingers like one would spare ribs or chicken wings. I tried a bite and, as Sue had said, it did taste like crispy pork…quite good, but Sue suggested one serving of cuy.

The next day we had arranged a boat trip out to the famous floating islands on Lake Titicaca. We were picked up at the hotel just before 7:00 and driven to the docks where we boarded a small launch for the ride out to the islands. The Uros Islands, a group of some 40 small islands built of layers of tightly packed totora reeds, are located about 10 kms offshore. The isla;nds, houses, and boats are all built of these reeds. The islands provide a glimpse of one of Peru’s oldest cultures and illustrate a form of human habitation that has evolved over centuries. We alighted on one of the springy, moist islands, and were given a presentation by our guide, assisted by a couple of island residents, of how the island was constructed. We learned that the islanders make their living by fishing, trapping birds and, nowadays, by selling replicas of their amazing reed boats and other trinkets to visiting tourists. We walked around the island for a bit, and then boarded one of the reed boats for a short journey to one of the other islands (while our launch motored over). Along the way we were entertained by some young children who sang songs in several languages (including Frere Jacques in French!!). The next island was bigger and actually had some small reed huts in the shape of a tee pee that were rented out to intrepid travelers who wanted to spend a night in the complete isolation, silence, total darkness (no electricity) and frigid conditions of a floating island (No thanks!!!). Thinking about just one frigid night here, made us think about just how hard life would be for these island peoples. The temperature here never reaches a high of more than 12 or 14 degrees and a cold wind off the lake blows continuously. The people living here have no modern conveniences of any kind and exist at a purely subsistence level, in a cold and inhospitable environment. They are certainly “free” and unencumbered by restrictions of city life, but we both agreed their existence would no doubt be one of the hardest of any peoples we’d encountered on the trip.

We again boarded our launch for the two-hour ride to a “real” island, Taquile, where we hiked for about 45 mins from the drop point up a gently sloping path and across the top of the island to the small main town on this picturesque island. The culture here was completely different than the floating islands. The people of Taquile, who still wear traditional dress, have maintained strong community ties and engage in cooperative farming on the island’s terraces which support various crops and grazing animals. We had lunch here at a small restaurant serving a typical meal of soup, chicken or fish and tea. It was here that I learned about one of our travelling companions who was suffering from altitude sickness like I was. My head had been very painful all morning and this English lady said she had been suffering likewise for several days with a headache. We commiserated with each other and it was actually some “mental” relief for me to know that my headache was a common symptom and not due to some problem other than altitude. (In fact the next morning, Sue convinced me to avail myself of the hotel’s free oxygen service in an effort to help my continuing headache, but unfortunately 10 minutes of sucking O2 didn’t really help much.)

On the way down to our launch (which had motored around the island after dropping us) we learned why we hadn’t come up this way. A series steps (reportedly 535 of them) led almost straight down to the harbour far below. Descending was much easier than would have been the climb up!

The next day we were heading back to Juliaca for an afternoon flight to Arequipa, the last city of our Peruvian tour. We boarded a tourist mini van with a couple of others headed in the same direction and said farewell to Puno. Our trip here had been interesting, and we’d had a great meal at the Andina, but overall we hadn’t really experienced the anticipated mystique of fabled Lake Titicaca. Puno itself is a drab and uninteresting place, so really the only real highlight of our three days was the hour or so we spent on the floating islands. Certainly Lake Titicaca is a “must see” for anyone visiting Peru, but it won’t be a place we will return to, even if we do get back to Peru some day.

En route Cusco to Puno