April 17
The train to Puno leaves at 8am, and we have been told to be there by 7.30. At 7.25 the laundry is still not open, and we abandon our stuff - if you're ever in Cuzco and see someone wearing a Zanzibari OneOcean t-shirt, it's mine ! A valuable lesson learned - never do your washing on your last day in town . We get on the train without problem, to join the four other 'backpackers' in the carriage - approximately a 12% load ! Later in the day we see that the first class carriage is almost full, and we're glad that we didn't spend the extra. The train leaves on time, very slowly - the track runs down the middle of streets, and through busy markets, hooting its horn; initially we are surprised, but then we realise that with only three trains a week, normal life takes precedence, and the train has to tread carefully. As we leave Cuzco, we get up to full speed (probably around 40mph) - we even overtake a car travelling on the (very good, paved) road which runs by the tracks - although it is a 60s vintage VW Beetle ! After an hour or two, we have settled into the gently rhythm of the rails, and have stopped worrying about the Ormeno bus which shot past us (with the new road, the bus can do Cuzco-Puno in around 6 hours, rather than the 10 which the train will take). I should probably devote a few lines to the scenery, which is fantastic, but we've been in Peru for a fortnight now and we're becoming blase about incredible countryside
. The train stops about noon at La Reya, the high point on the journey, at 14 thousand and some feet - when we planned this trip, we thought that this would be quite something, but after our trip to the Colca Canyon, and the Inca Trail, it seems pretty commonplace. We buy a couple of empanadas and some cake from the tiny market which has been setup, specially for us, and watch the first class carriage disgorge an entire Kuoni tour group, intent on buying up a couple of alpacas worth of jumpers and socks. A few more hours and we're in (and out of) Juliaca, before a very leisurely last half hour along the shore of Lake Titicaca and into Puno, about an hour ahead of schedule. We find our hotel without problem (wow ! it's a Best Western !), dump our bags, and head out to find our last two postcards of the trip, and some supper. It's surprisingly cold after the sun goes down (the guidebook does tell you about this, but as normal I'm out in T-shirt and the locals are all laughing into the sleeves of their thick coats), and we end up in a touristico 'fine dining' restaurant, blowing $20 on lake trout and chips (our most expensive dinner of the trip). I also have my first encounter with a 'cerveza grande' - it's a full 1.1 litre (that's 2 real pints, or 2.5 of your yanqui pints
) and nearly floors me (I have already had 2 of the regular big beers) !
April 18
A relative lie-in this morning, with our pickup for our trip to the Uros islands not till 8.30am, so we have a leisurely breakfast served by just about the first miserable people that we've met on this trip, but it's a beautiful day and our spirits are high. We are bussed down to the waterfront, and by 9.15 we're chugging gently out across Puno bay, which is covered by a thick layer of green algae. Apparently a few years ago, the water level in the lake rose (El Nino strikes !), causing a load of sewage to flow into the bay, which in turn caused the algae. At the time, it was so thick that some tourists tried to walk on it, thinking it was grass, but it's been gradually thinning and the locals hope that within another year or two Puno bay will be clear again. We're told that the rest of the lake is still clear, but the Uros islands are within the bay, so we will have to wait until tomorrow to find out for ourselves. The Uros islands are the famous floating islands, made only from reeds - it's quite an experience to step onto the island, and feel it move almost as much as the boat you just got off ! The islanders here near Puno make their living completely from tourism, and by the time we arrive, the little stalls are set up with handicrafts; the usual knitted products and paintings which we've seen across Peru, and some whicker products made from the reeds of the lake. There is another group of islanders living on similar reed islands, across on the eastern, Bolivian shore, who still fish for a living, trading their catches for vegetables and fuel on weekly visits to the shore. We visit two separate islands, with an optional reed boat transfer between the two ('only 15 soles for the two of you'), but there isn't really anything to see on either one - the USP of these islands is the island itself, and after five minutes of bouncing up and down, the trip becomes a little bit sad... maybe just us, or maybe just that in our whole trip, this is really the only time we have seen where tourism is not just part of the economy, but the whole economy
. By 12.30, we're back in Puno, and by 1pm we're sitting in the hotel, awaiting our lift to Bolivia. For this next part of our trip, Puno-Copacabana-La Paz, Mrs Mac had concerns about crossing the border, so we have pre-booked transfers and accommodation with a Bolivian tourist agency. It turns out that our driver has parked outside the hotel early and then promptly fallen asleep, so our pick-up is fifteen minutes late, but we make good time around the lake, and by 3.45 we are at the Bolivian border. The crossing itself is easy - considerably less trouble than the time we crossed by road from Canada into the US, for instance
, but our Peruvian is not taking us on to Copacabana, and after forty minutes of waiting, we give up on the pre-arranged transfer and jump into a cab - Copacabana is only ten minutes from the border. At the hotel, Mrs Mac has a heated argument about our missing car (afterwards, she's very pleased with herself, as she wasn't sure if her Spanish would be up to it), but it's decided that we should take it up at the main office in La Paz the following evening. We watch the sun set over the lake (beautiful
) and then head up to the main square and the cathedral - this is Good Friday (if you'd been paying attention to the dates, you'd have known that already) and Copa is
the place to be in Northern Bolivia. All the roads around the square, and the square itself, are packed with stalls and people - there's even a section with half a dozen foozball tables, and the Bolivians take no prisoners at foozball ! We wander around for an hour or so, looking for a cambio to change some dollars, but this is a night for the locals, and none of the tour agencies or cambios are open, so we finally change some money at a hostel - sadly, the smallest note we get back is 50 bolivianos (about $6.50) which is too big for any of the food stalls to want to change - seems that the national change shortage spreads across borders ! By nine o'clock we're too hungry to keep waiting for the candle-lit procession (scheduled for 8pm, actually started at about 11.30, we find out the next morning...) and head back to the hotel for a (very good) supper and bed.
April 19
Another leisurely start, as we aren't getting picked up until 8am, so we have plenty of time for an excellent breakfast, looking out over the lake - it's another beautiful day, and from here it's really possible to see how the lake is often described as being 'aquamarine' blue. Apparently there's some problem with the dock, so we pile into a 4x4 and head off to a jetty a few miles north of Copa, where we are picked up by a speedboat for the trip to Isla del Sol. It seems that Turisbus have booked us on a private tour for this trip, just us and our friendly guide, Alan (who forgot to pick us up from the border yesterday ). This isn't really what we had in mind, but after a couple of times trying in English, and once in Spanish, we persuade him to stop talking. We spend the twenty minute boatride watching the sun sparkle on the water - the first time that that description really seems appropriate, as the sun is still fairly low, and the air is incredibly clear - it really does look like a carpet of shimmering sparkly crystals floating on the surface of the blue blue water. We walk around Isla del Sol for a couple of hours, and while it's very pretty, it's very much a tourist route. Interestingly, and probably because this is a very big family weekend, almost all of the tourists we see look like they're Bolivians, and we guess that they're up from La Paz for the weekend (they look like big city folk
). The boat ride back to Copa isn't so sparkly - guess the sun is too high. We have lunch in the hotel, and then grab our gear and head down to the bus stop on the main street, for our ride to La Paz. Traffic is snarled up - there's a big queue of cars lined up ready to get blessed, with flowers on the bonnets and ribbons hanging from everywhere, but obviously the blessing is a slow process, because the queue seems to be right the way down the main street ! Fortunately the bus is heading away from the cathedral, so once we're all on board we're quickly on our way. The only excitement of the journey is the ferry crossing of the straights of Tiquina, where the Bolivian Navy has its only presence, watching over the barges which carry vehicles across, and the small boats which carry the passengers. We get to La Paz about 5.30 pm, driving through the suburbs of El Alto, before heading down into the bowl that is La Paz - quite a sight. We check into our hotel, then have a go at Turisbus about our failed pickup at the border - after some haggling, we agree a suitable discount, and it's smiles all around..... until we're advised that our taxi will be waiting to pick us up at 5am the next morning for our 6.55am flight. We've got $8 in bolivianos, and Mrs Mac is adamant that we're not changing any more cash, so we head out looking for some cheap eats. Fortunately, we picked the right city for cheap eats, and after an hour wandering, we're soon sitting down tucking into pollo and lomo and a litre of Fanta, all for $2.20 ! We'd made a decision before we started to have a review conversation over this dinner, and we reflect on our trip... we've had a fantastic time, and we want to see more - more of South America, more of Central America, more of the world - so we agree that our vague plans to pack everything in and head off for a few months have become concrete. [In fact, I'm writing this up at work, and in about 20 minutes I'm going to ask my boss for a quick chat, and hand in my notice
]. Excited, nervous, but full, we head off to bed.
April 20
The wake-up call comes at 4.15 (our last early start of the holiday), and we shower and pack up. There's a couple of bowls of yogurt set up in one corner of the dining room, and we neck that, with a cup of tea, before finding our driver. Incredibly, there's a Salvation Army band (yup, the full deal, brass and drums and two dozen ladies singing) walking down the middle of the street (at 4.55 am !!!!) so we have to wait for a few minutes while they head up a side street towards the cathedral. We're at the airport by 5.20, and the check in line for AA922 is only a couple of people long (this flight starts in La Paz, but stops in Santa Cruz, where it picks up a few more pax). I don't want to check our bags (or ourselves) in for our continuing BA flight to LHR, but the agent insists that it's the rules and he has to. Two minutes of typing later, he's unable to check us in for our BA flight, so he tells us to collect our bags as normal at MIA and check in there - just like we asked to do in the first place. We head through security, past the Narcotics agents (in combat fatigues and .45s) and into the departure lounge, where the pricing at the snack bar (tiny letters at the bottom of the menu warn that prices are in USD) fools us into spending some dollars on top of our final bolivianos. We emplane on time, and after cabin pressurization (on the ground !) we're soon up above the clouds, and admiring the early morning views of the Andes. The flight is maybe 30% full for this first hour-long segment, and we're all thrown an AA box containing some peach juice and a small muffin (I'm still waiting to find a muffin as good as those at the Regent Chiang Mai...). We land smoothly at Santa Cruz, and lose about 20 pax, who are replaced after 15 minutes by another 20 heading up to Miami. Groundstaff come on board during the stop and make a real nuisance of themselves, 'checking' each row of seats. Still, we're off again on-time for the nearly 7 hours flight up to Miami. More excellent views for the first hour or so, then it's cloudy over the Amazon and most of the Caribbean, and I'm cursing the fact that I actually *chose* to watch 'The Truth About Charlie' on the BA flight across, and can't bear to watch it again. A hot breakfast is served about 9.30 am (about 40 minutes into the flight), and then another AA box (more juice, small ham n cheese roll) is thrown out at about 1pm. By the time we land at Miami, we're both bored and starving - still, gotta love that extra space !
We clear immigration and get our bags (admiring all the sniffer dogs), then head off to terminal E to find the BA checkin. This flight (and indeed both the MIA-LHR flights for the next three days) have been showing full in Y for weeks, as this is the end of the Easter holidays, and families are heading home from Disney for the new school term, so I let the agent know that our timings are flexible, and we 'd be happy to take a later flight if it would help. The agent doesn't think that they'll need volunteers, and even though he says he'll put us on the list, he doesn't mark the baggage tags, but I can't be bothered to argue. We head off to the Bacardi bar for a big plate of nachos and a beer, and then go up to the pooldeck to get some air and sit in the sun for an hour. We were thinking of swimming, but it's cooling down now (it's around 5.30) and there's quite a breeze, so we just get some final sun. We head down through security at about 7, and wait at the gate - they're paging plenty of people, but they all seem to be for seat-shuffling - lots of families have been split up. (I later learn from the CSD that they had bumped two singleys, and that the flight was completely full in all classes). We wait until the last minute to board, and the jumbo is packed - after a less-than-half-full 757 with MRTC, it's amazing how many people there are in the 747 ! Again, it's a standard, and unmemorable, BA Y flight - only points of note are that, amazingly, they didn't run out of London Pride, and that the hundred or so kids on board didn't make much noise. We landed an hour early, cleared immigration and customs easily, and were home by 11am.
Well, that's the lot - hope everyone enjoyed it, and sorry if it's too long - ended up at about 12,500 words, rather more than the 7,500 that I estimated ... [insert smiley here as I'm over the limit in this post, apparently]
[Mrs Mac was doing most of the photography on this trip, with a Canon SLR (she's not a convert to this new-fangled digital stuff) but I did take a few snapshots with our new Ixus v3 - if anyone knows how to get them on-line, I'd be happy to put them up to accompany the trip.]