WEATHER: Cooler and 22C
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Not a bad thing, but leaving Cuzco
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Wrong information on my t-shirt
Today we leave Cuzco and head for Puno and Lake Titicaca. I have to say again how lovely Cuzco was, but 9 nights was more than enough. Rosita was too big to get into Cuzco city, so we have to transfer in and out of the city in a shuttle bus. It is a small pain as we don’t have access to the truck and secondly we have to pack all our crap into bags and the minivan and as the weeks go on we are all accumulating more and more crap and we are all getting more and more bags. Kate has been calling me the ‘bag lady’ which this isn’t the first time I have been called this and she also can’t talk Miss also has more than 4 bags lady!!! It’s organized. An electronic bag, clothes bag, hand bag, day bag and a munchies bag, so they are all necessities!!!
Our tour t-shirts were ready at the last hour. I think that is a pre-requisite for a t-shirt man to make promises on when the shirts will be ready and then keep pushing it out till an hour before we leave to get them to the hotel. Both our Africa shirts were the same, we got them, but at the last minute as we were driving out of camp. I am not really sure why I get the shirts. The women’s sizes never fit me, so I always have to get a men’s size and I don’t really like wearing the men’s shirts. I have sent my Africa shirts home and I know I will do the same with this one, considering there was a mistake on mine. I am travelling from Lima to Quito, circumnavigating the continent; my shirt has me travelling from Lima to Quito the opposite way, so my travel route doesn’t look that impressive. I asked Mark if I could get a refund on my trip as I am only doing the 3 weeks and not the 5 months according to my shirt – yeah nice try!!! I also got my berniesworldodyssey patches back from the t-shirt guy this morning and they look awesome. I got 20 of them done (minimum order) but they look great with red writing on a black background. I will get one sewed on my backpack, day backpack, day bag, my 2 jackets and anything else I can think of. Nic and Kate both wanted one, so that is another 2 offloaded. I am sure I will find somewhere to stitch the rest, but they look great and for 1.10AUD a patch they were a steal.
So once at the truck we see that she has been pimped out in Christmas decorations, a few jolly Santa’s, and lots of tinsel. It’s still hard to think it is Christmas in just over a week. But a nice touch Mark and Gray – well done. So 9am we are all packed on and back on the road. I do like driving, plugging in my IPod and watching the world go by. It is still hard to believe that I am in Peru, living the dream, travelling and experiencing new cultures and making new friends. I am blessed I have met some amazing people (and not some) that are now considered very close friends seeing this beautiful world we live and it makes you appreciate just how lucky we are back home and how much ‘stuff’ we probably don’t need, how much we waste, trying to keep up with the ‘Joneses’, technology and the stress we put on our own lives. A lot has to be said on the way we live and I am not totally sure I can go back to living that life style again. I have some news and plans in the pipeline that re-enforces that frame of mind, I am nearly close to revealing my plans, but I need to make sure on a few details first, but it is exciting and challenging but feel like I am ready.
Today is a travel day. We stopped at the old city walls of Cuzco, they were just..walls, but there was a pretty amazing view and then back on the road till 11am when we stopped for a potty stop. Most of the scenery today is smaller villages, farm land and snowcapped mountains. The afternoon scenery was just beautiful with massive mountains, we stopped for a photo stop at 4338m and it just randomly started to hail! Small beads, which I caught a few in my hand from the truck window, but hail!!! I am snapping photos as we are driving. Poor Seamus cops it when I keep opening the window with blasts of cold air, but I try and be quick, I just can’t let that scenery pass me by without capturing it.
We stopped for lunch at a gas station just after 2pm. As there really aren’t any rosters for the choppers, there are a core group that just gets in there and gets it done, so who am I to argue with that, I would prefer to wash and flap, so it sort of just works itself out anyway. I am feeling really tired and I think it may finally be the altitude kicking in. I feel fine, I am just super tired. We are still at 4000m, so it would make sense, but it really saps the energy out of you! The gas station wasn’t the greatest stop with local dogs hanging around and it smelling if urine, but I am sure all the stations would have been the same and we were going to start eating each other soon if we didn’t stop soon. TIP – This is Peru!!!
We arrived into Puno just after 4pm. Once again Rosita is too big for the city’s streets, so it is another shuttle transfer from the bus depot, where we leave Rosita for the next 2 days and get the transfer to the hotel. We need to take overnight bags for our trip to Lake Titicaca tomorrow, so it is just a matter of getting a little organized. I am still leaving my big backpack on the truck and have a smaller bag I take with me with a few days of cloths in it, but that has since grown over the last week, and I just about have 75% of my cloths in thus day bag anyway, I might as well nearly take in my big pack at the end of the day. In my defence, I need clothes for hot and cold weather, so this is part of the reason I have more clothes, once we get out of the altitude, I’m hoping the weather will warm up a bit and I can pack some of the warmer clothes back into the backpack. Oh the travel tribulations……
Puno, named after San Carlos de Puno in November 4 of 1668, is a city in southeastern Peru. It is an important urban center at the regional level, whose type is administrative, utilities, financial, tourism and culture. Surrounded by hills, ranging from 3810-4050 m (between the lake and the upper parts). Puno is one of the highest cities in Peru and the fifth in the world .
Within the national tourism development, the city of Puno is the third city that receives the greatest flow of foreign tourists after Cuzco and Lima. In 2009 Puno received a total of 274,946 tourists, of whom 96,074 were domestic tourists and 179,872 were foreigners. Notably, in the biggest party of Peru (Feast of the Candelaria Virgin ) that develops in February, concentrated 19,424 visitors, of which 9672 were domestic tourists and 9752 were foreigners.
The hotel is right next door to the main shopping street of Puno and as we headed out for our small city tour, that took 15 minutes, the city has a great feel to it. Plenty of restaurants and it felt safe to walk around. We had a few hours to kill before dinner, so we were shown where the supermarket was as we had to buy some thank-you gifts in the form of food for our host’s tomorrow night on Amantai Island. They suggest things like rice, sugar, pasta etc… and with a budget of 10SOL each (3.50AUD) we walked in to make our purchases. The food is ridiculously cheap. For my 10SOLS I got 2kg of rice, 2 packets of pasta and a bag of sugar. All that for 3.50AUD. I hope that they will be happy with that. We had to decide to buy something that they wouldn’t normally get themselves, like a small splurge, or to get them something we know that they could use or swap with other families. We decided to stick with what they would know and got the basics for them. We were also told not to get sweets for the children as there is no dental or doctors on the islands, so they are trying to keep their teeth healthy by telling visitors to not bring lollies, makes sense.
So we hit a few souvenir stores on the way back to the hotel and then out to dinner as a group to a restaurant that serves gunei pig if people do desired to have that for dinner. There were 2 people, Julia and Nic, I just couldn’t and stuck with lamb. I did have a small taste of Nic’s and it tasted a little like duck, but to just see their small heads on the plate, with their dead little eyes looking at you, it was just too much for me. I think if they served it without all its ‘people’ features, like a fillet or something then I would be more inclined to have ordered it. It looked fiddly to eat and not a lot of meat for your effort, but thanks Nic for letting me have a taste.
We have a BIG 2 days starting tomorrow. We get to travel on the world’s highest navigable lake, meeting our mama and papa’s, our new family for the night tomorrow night and seeing some of the islands on Lake Titicaca. I like Puno.
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