The Cusco clinic gave me the all clear on the parasite, and the next morning we got an early bus to Puno. It was an interesting bus journey. When we first got on to the bus there was a little girl in my seat, who quickly moved back to her mother when we indicated they were our seats. Then during the journey the local mother proceeded to look through the girls hair, pulling things out and killing them between her thumb nails. I can only assume that the child had lice, and spent the rest of the bus journey wondering whether she had transferred any to my seat! This particular bus also had a rather special toilet. I opened the cubicle door to be greeted by a toilet and nothing else, no washbasin or toilet paper on the wall. When I opened the lid of the toilet it was literally a hole in the floor and I could see the road passing by underneath the bus! There was nothing to stop people from going to the toilet in the middle of the road in a local town, as the bus passes through - erm rather unhygienic! After about 5 hours trying not to think about the lice too much, we got in to Puno which is a little town alongside Titicaca lake. The town was nothing much to look at, but that is one enormous lake. We checked in to our hostel (Scottish logo but strangely no Scottish staff) and booked a tour first thing the following morning to go out to the Floating Islands of Uros and then Tequile Island.
Later we headed out looking for some dinner. We found the main plaza and the pedestrianised road with all the restaurants and shops on it easily enough. Then we walked for about 10 minutes trying to find a restaurant that was in the Lonely Planet guide. When we eventually found the right address, it had closed down, so we ended up eating somewhere else anyway - unfortunately despite the recent publication date you cant always trust the info in the Lonely Planet to be up to date! Puno has also got some of those motokars that we first saw in Iquitos, which provide a quick and cheap way to get back to the hostel when its cold.
The following morning we got a bus to the jetty and then a boat transfer to the Uros floating islands. Once on the boat we started to realise how big Lake Titicaca actually is. It seems to go on forever in to the horizon, and with the waves you could be forgiven for thinking you were on the sea rather than a lake.
I was amazed by the floating islands. When we arrived about 6 of the local people were all waiting to receive us and (clearly coached) sang out a greeting. There were 6 families staying on the island we visited, and the leader and his friend gave us a brief introduction in to how they make their floating island, using the reeds that grow all around them in the lake. Then we each went along with a local woman in to their houses. Now I say houses, it is actually just one room made entirely out of reeds. Reeds below, reeds above and reeds on all sides. It was hard to believe that a family of 5 people were living in that one little room, with only a curtain on a string dividing the two mattresses on the floor, and all their clothes hanging from the reed walls. Their one luxury was a little portable TV that was hooked up to a car battery that was sitting on a chair. Seeing that really made me thankful for the way we live back home. I can only imagine how cold it must get on that reed island in their little reed house at night time. Frankly I was so shocked at how they were living that I didn’t really know what to say to her inside the house, but the local woman was obviously very proud of her little home and happy to show us around. Thankfully another English tourist managed to spit out ‘Muy Bonita’ so we weren’t all completely silent when she showed us in! They also took us out for a wee ride on the lake in one of their reed boats, which are fantastic. It looks like a large canoe made entirely of reeds. I was impressed with how much they managed to create out of a simple pile of reeds. Not to mention the fact that the very ground you are walking on is entirely made up of reeds and reed roots that they have cut and strung together - phenomenal. We’d never seen anything quite like it, and probably never will again. The reed ground was actually quite soft underfoot, and apparently they have to continually replenish the reeds as they rot away in to the lake.
Then we got back on the boat and took a slow putter to Tequile island. Frankly it was 2.5 hours that probably could have been better spent as it was a long way to go to see an island. However we got some beautiful views of the blue water of the lake from the top of the island, and the locals made us lunch in their communal restaurant (trout caught in Lake Titicaca is the speciality there and was pretty tasty). The communal restaurant is an interesting idea - basically rather than one family always benefiting from the tourists eating in their restaurant, the families rotate making the lunch in the community restaurant so that everyone benefits. How very fair. Our tour guide did give us some interesting info about the locals in the village while we ate. You can apparently tell a lot about a person by looking at their clothing and hair. For instance a man with a certain belt around his waist is married, and a woman in a darker skirt or hair tassles is also married. A boy wearing a certain hat a certain way is looking for a girl. The men on the island all weave fabric, whilst the woman spin the yarn. Apparently when they want to get married the boy takes a hat he has woven himself to the girls father, and the father pores water into the hat, to see whether the weave will hold water, and if it doesn’t hold water the boy is a lousy weaver and wont get his daughters hand!
We are keeping to a tight schedule at the moment, as we have to make it all the way back to Lima in 2 weeks to catch our next flight. So we only spent the one day in Puno, and the next day we took a short bus ride (3 hours) to Copacabana. This involved us stopping at the Peruvian/Bolivian border, getting off the bus and getting our passports stamped. The other interesting thing about coming in to Copa, is that the bus stops at the local municipality and some guy got on and charged us 1 BS each just for coming in to town! Talk about milking the tourists. When the bus pulled in to Copacabana at the terminal terrestre (bus station) it was only a short walk up a hill to our hotel. We actually lucked out with the Hotel Cuppula, which was up on a hill overlooking the lake and had some fantastic views. Not to mention the fact that it actually had a hot shower as advertised, which is turning in to something of a novelty now. The combination of good water pressure and consistent hot water can cure almost any ailment! Lol. The only trouble with the hotel is that it didn’t have any internet connection. This came as a bit of a shock (welcome to Bolivia) as we have had either a PC or Wifi at every hostel we have stayed in so far. Again we only had one day to spend in Copacabana, so we booked a tour through the hotel, to go and see the Isla del Sol the following morning.
That afternoon we walked down to the beach (well it felt just like a white sandy beach although it was a lake) and went to see the lake up close. Copacabana feels a lot more touristy than Puno and has a load of paddle boats for rental along the beach. There was also a main road that ran down to the beach that was covered with restaurants/bars and shops. I took the opportunity to buy one of those typical Peruvian brown alpaca jumpers, which is very soft and warm and so far has proven a wise buy. That night we had a couple of drinks on the beachfront and watched the sunset over the lake.
The following morning we got up early and attempted to get some pancakes for brekky at the hotel restaurant. After 15 minutes of sitting around with some great views, but still nary a cup of tea between us, we had to cancel the order and head for the boat. So we ended up eating Doritos and boxes of juice for our breakfast. The boat transferred us to the north side of the Isla del Sol first, where the man mumbled something in Spanish about the time we had to meet back at the boat, and we all clambered off. The strange thing about the boat tour, is that it wasn’t so much a tour as a boat transfer. The minute we got to the Isla del Sol we were on our own. However we spotted a tourist information centre and thought ‘great’ perhaps they can direct us to the path we need to walk up to see the Inka ruins. The north of the Isla del Sol is famous as its supposed to be the creation site for the Inkas, and is where a certain Sacred Stone can be found. So we went in to the tourist info office to find a man that only spoke Spanish, charging for maps that were all in Spanish and depicted one path up to the ruins (little help). So we decided to wing it and had a walk around until we found the path leading upwards. I think that after seeing the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu, we were bound to be a little disappointd by these ruins, which consisted of the remains of some Inka houses up on a hill. However we got some great views over Lake Titicaca on the walk up. The lack of tour guide and complete lack of any signs on the island meant that we almost missed seeing the Sacred Stone. However we asked a local girl that was selling something and she pointed it out…basically just a big stone. From a distance it looked like there was a smiley face on it, but I doubt that was what we were supposed to be looking at lol.
We walked back down to the boat, which then took us over to the south side of the Isla del Sol. However we only had 50 minutes there, before the boat was leaving to return to Copa. So off we marched up some steep Inka steps in search of the second ruins. However again without a guide, and with no useful signs we were a bit stumped when we came to a t junction in the path. There were some more tourists up ahead of us and they took a left, so we followed them. However it ended up being the wrong path, so we never did see the second ruins. Soon it was time to head back to the boat, and then back to Copa. Not before asking someone Quanta Questa for a kit kat, and they replied 15 BS - what a rip off - it seemed because it was an island that they were charging 3 times the price for everything on sale. We headed back to Copa for the night, were we grabbed some dinner at a cute little restaurant / chill out bar that would not have been out of place in Amsterdam, filled with fairy lights, tree branches and fairy pictures.
The following morning we packed our bags again (this gets a bit old when you are repacking your backpack every 2 days), and walked back down to the terminal terrestre to catch our bus out to La Paz. The person that sold us the tickets for this bus said it was a 3 hour direct service and should arrive in La Paz around 16h30. It is worth noting at this point that Copa has no ATMs and we had just spent our last BS on checking our email in the internet café, and getting some snacks for the bus ride. We had already paid for the hostel and bus tickets, so we reckoned we should be okay until we could get to an ATM in La Paz.
So we got on the bus in Copa, and after about an hour and a half the bus stopped and a man came up and said something in Spanish. I looked out the window and we appeared to be at some sort of port along the lake. The majority of the passengers on the bus started picking up their stuff and getting off the bus, so we figured we must have missed something. However as we were clearly not in La Paz yet and it was meant to be a direct service, we stayed put. Eventually the same guy got back on the bus and repeated his statement to us in Spanish, to which we said ‘Ingles?’ and he said ‘you have to get a ferry’. It turned out that the ‘direct’ bus service involved us getting off the bus halfway and paying another 1.50 BS each for a ferry ticket to get across to the other side of the lake. They put the bus (with all our baggage on it) on to its own ferry type thing and it bobbed dangerously along in the water. Now the astute amongst you may have noticed that we are currently short to the tune of 3 BS for our ferry tickets, as we have absolutely no BS left and were not expecting the extra charge. So rather annoyed and slightly panicked we ambled over to the queue for ferry tickets. We did have a couple of spare 1 dollar notes, so we were hoping the ferry guy would accept one of those, and after a bit of complaining, thankfully he did. Otherwise we may well have been stranded in the middle of nowhere for want of 3 BS (30 pence). So we got the ferry over to the other side of the lake, and with typical south american efficiency the bus is now nowhere to be seen, and there is no one from the bus company to meet us and tell us where to go. So we hung around in the middle of nowhere for a while, until the bus made an appearance and we could all clamber back on board - all very odd. The remainder of the journey to La Paz was fairly uneventful. We did meet a friendly Irish girl that had been promised a direct service from Cusco to La Paz, and had already changed buses twice and caught the ferry, not to mention being about 8 hours behind her promised arrival time, so we really couldn’t complain too much.
When we neared La Paz the bus driver stopped along the top of the hillside, and we got an amazing view of the city in the valley between the mountains. La Paz is a large sprawling city (I suppose it is the capital of Bolivia afterall) and I was pleased to find that the city felt a bit more well kept. Well better kept than the little grungy towns we’d been staying at along the way. Whilst we still saw a lot of poor people on the streets trying to sell you things, we also saw a number of more modern looking buildings and people in business wear making their way around. The other thing that struck me about La Paz were all the minibus taxis, it could almost have been a scene from SA, with all the taxis queued up along the side of the main road, touting for customers to their next destination - Wynberg Kaap!
Again we only had time for a short stay in La Paz (1.5 days), so we’d prebooked ourselves on to a Gravity tour (thanks for the recommendation Ags) to do the Worlds Most Dangerous Road (or road of death as its more commonly known). Once checked in to the hostel, we had to make our way to the Gravity offices to check our passports and sign their disclaimer, before we could get a bite to eat and relax for the night. The following morning we were up super early again, so that we could meet the Gravity guide Phil at 07h00 in a coffee shop, before heading off for the tour. Basically Gravity offer a guided mountain biking ride down the WMDR, with a shower and lunch at the bottom of the road at an animal sanctuary, and a bit of optional zip lining.
So we grabbed an early brekky, and then met Phil our mountain biking guide, who we were slightly alarmed to hear had only been in La Paz for 2 weeks himself, so he was a bit new to the game. However the owner of the company was along for the biking as well. Basically a small bus, with all the bikes on the roof, drives you up a mountain for about 2.5 hours, and then they hand out all the kit (waterproofs, helmet, gloves, goggles) and give you a briefing on the bikes. We then had a short ride along a gravel road to get used to the new bikes, before we starting on the WMDR itself.
At this point I was starting to feel a bit nervous, and keen to see the road itself and understand what I was really getting myself in for. The WMDR is in fact a gravel / dirt road, and its pretty much all downhill. Which is good as Im not particularly fit. At the top of the road and in some places it does get fairly narrow (wide enough for one car only). However the gravel and the narrowness are not the real issue. The issue is the sheer cliff / drop along the left handside as you are riding along. Gravity were actually pretty good, and divide the road up in to sections, so you stop every 5 minutes or so and get a briefing about the next part of the road that is coming up, which does help you to feel more secure. Phil’s catchphrase was ‘Don’t be a f*ing idiot!’ meaning that as long as you ease your way down and don’t take any stupid chances, you wont go off the edge and become another fatality. As if to remind you of this statement, every now and then on the road there is a cross, or a sign remembering an unlucky individual whos brakes failed, or who leaned the wrong way and lost their balance. Actually it sounds a lot worse than it is in reality, and there are some great views of the mountains along the way. It really is a spectacular road, although you wouldn’t want to be coming down there in a big truck let me tell you (and the locals still do!). We did take the road at our own pace ie very slow and the guides didn’t rush us, so once you’ve got to grips with the brakes on the gravel, you can take in the views, and stop stressing so much about the sheer drops. It was actually quite a long bike ride at 4 hours, even though it was downhill, as I was gripping the brakes the whole way down. By the time we got down to the bottom my hands and shoulders were aching from the strain.
The animal sanctuary at the bottom was cool, and housed a number of different types of monkeys and birds. We saw some beautiful macaws, some spider monkeys (How long ARE their limbs??) and some kapuchins. The young kapuchins were pretty tame and one of them walked right up to me and insisted on using me as a climbing frame - very cute. After a well deserved lunch, Steve went off to do the zip lining across the valley, while I took some photos. Then it was a long bus ride back to the Gravity offices to collect a photo CD of the day, and exchange my tshirt. All in all a great day out.
While we were waiting for the CD, we met another couple (a guy from Florida and a girl from Tazmania) who had done the same ride, and we got chatting, and then decided to head out for some dinner together. This is one of the weird / cool things about travelling. We spent the rest of the evening with these people and they were very friendly and we chatted easily about our respective travels etc, and then at the end of the night we said our goodbyes and got in to our taxis home…and as we never thought to ask we will never know what their names are! Lol
The following day in La Paz we had arrange to meet up with Connie and Loz (we knew from the earlier Gap tour) and got some lunch. It was great to catch up and see some ‘old’ friends. We went for a walk around and saw the witches market (llama foetuses are strung up all over the place - gross) and to an old church, and then stopped for an ice cream, before it was time for us to head off and catch our night bus down to Uyuni (11 hours).
The bus proved to be the worst night bus we have taken so far. Despite the semi cama seats, and the recommended lonely planet bus company (Omar) that we used. The bus was meant to leave at 19h00, but at 19h30 the bus was still nowhere in sight. And the complete lack of information from the bus company didn’t help the situation. The bus did eventually leave at 19h45 without one announcement as to its ETA, or an apology (again its all about south american time). There were no videos, a toilet or any snacks on the bus, and the overhead lights didn’t work. The minute I decided to start reading my book the lamp gave out on my torch and I was cast in to darkness. Then at about 01:30 in the morning just when we were getting to sleep, the tarred road ended and the dirt road began. You have never heard that sort of ungodly rumbling, cracking, racked in your life. The bus was basically rattling its way down the road, not to mention the rattling sensation that I can practically still feel in my bones now. And it continued that way relentlessly for pretty much the next 5 hours. Needless to say we didn’t get any sleep, and I couldn’t actually believe it when I heard a local man snoring away next to us. I don’t know how anyone can possibly be expected to sleep through that noise and constant shaking! It was with some relief and total exhaustion that we eventually arrives in Uyuni around 07h00 and crawled our way to the hotel. We left our bags there (too erly for check in) and got an interesting breakfast from a café whilst we waited for the room to be ready. I ordered bacon and eggs, but I ended up with some sort of omelette with long ham strips in it! Lol
Fortunately the room was ready early, so we got a couple our hours kip and then headed in to town to find a tour of the Salt Flats. Much to our dismay every single tour agency was closed up. We learnt that during the day their offices are actually all closed, and that they only do early mornings and late afternoons. So we grabbed some lunch and then managed to find a tour agency open later on, that has promised us an English guide for our 4x4 trip.
We are doing a 2 night, 3 day tour that promises to take in the Salt flats, some geysers and some coloured lagoons, so we are looking forward to some awesome scenery but more about that later.
Hope alls well at home.
Kirst x
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