After our 4 day hike, we decided to take the tourist bus to Puno. What’s in Puno? It’s the city on the the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca. What’s the tourist bus? Instead of taking the direct bus that takes 6 hours, the tourist bus makes 3 or 4 stops at points of interest and takes 10 hours instead. There are actually 3 companies that do this and we kept running into the other tour groups all day, none of the buses were full. What a waste!

Not on the itinerary, point of interest #1 was a newly flooded city. It had started to rain when we returned from the hike at about 8 pm and didn’t stop until we were on the bus the next morning. The road and train tracks were flooded, but still drivable. The first planned stop was at “the Sistine Chapel of the Americas” in Andahuaylillas. Again, no pictures allowed in the church, sorry. It was very ornate and probably always under restoration. The next pit stop was Raqchi, an Inca citadel. The ruins contained a giant temple, lots of storage/warehouses, a 5 meter high defensive wall with watchtower, baths and part of the paved Inca trail. The next stop was quick at the highest point on the road, 4338 meters. Every rest stop or pullout has local people selling the same “homemade” things, but this one also had a spitting llama (it was not happy when a tourist tried to climb on its back for a picture). The final stop was Pukara, a pre-Inca city and museum. Some of the theories here were a little far fetched and/or lost in translation. Apparently the pre-Inca had a similar fable as the Greek Prometheus?!?

We arrived in Puno with enough time to find a place to sleep and grab dinner while taking in the Peruvian Carnaval of traditional dancing in the streets and people spraying each other with some sort of foam.

There’s not much to do in Puno besides visit The Lake. So early the next morning we went down to the docks with a newly found German, Spanish speaking girl. She did all the talking and negotiating of prices and we were on a tour at 8am. We first visited the floating islands, collectively called Uros. They make these out of floating pieces of sod and layers and layers of reeds that end up being about 6 feet in depth. The islands main economy is tourism, and most of the men go to the mainland to work. Women run the household and the kids go to school on these islands, both primary and secondary, 11 years total. Then onto a “natural” island, meaning terra firma. Taquile, has about 2,000 residents and life generally goes on the way it has for centuries except for the tourist eyes. We climbed up one side of the island, around to the central square of the only town, ate lunch and back down the other side. It was a quick tour, but if you wanted you could have stayed overnight with a family. We lucked out and had great weather and got some great photo ops.

The next day up early for another bus to Arequipa. We were now headed for the desert, volcanoes and the deepest canyon in the world on a short 6 hour ride. Arequipa has a well preserved historic center with you guessed it, its own Plaza de Armas. It seems no Spanish city is complete without one. It is surrounded by 3 partially snow-capped volcanoes, of which only one is apparently active. With the recent earthquakes in Chile, this monster looming over the city is on the minds of lots of locals. After what seemed like days of just go, go, go, we decided to take the rest of the day off and just hit the two major attractions the next day. We went to the Santa Catalina Convent, which remained secluded until 1970. The city then required them to install modern things like electricity and plumbing and then they opened their doors after 391 years of secrecy. The place is huge and is like a city within a city. It would have had to have been if it survived for almost 400 years. The other big thing we wanted to see was Juanita, the frozen Inca ice maiden. The museum housed her and all the artifacts found with her and other mummies on the same mountain. Unfortunately, Juanita herself is only on display 6 months per year and we had to look at Sarita instead, still very impressive. Again NO PHOTOS!

We decided to do a 2 day, 1 night excursion to the deepest canyon on the world, Colca Canyon. By excursion I mean guided bus tour. So we were off once again at the crack of dawn. The views were scenic and we saw lots of llamas, alpacas, and vicuñas. Vicuñas are the wild, distant relative in the camel family. Peru has sanctuaries that have been successful in re-establishing the population. Along this road we got even higher 4910 meters (16,100 feet). We saw lots of small towns still using the pre-Inca terraces for farming. We also had a relaxing dip in some hot springs. A highlight was a small hike/nature walk which lead us to a pre-Inca cemetery. I am still baffled that they have left bones in these mass burials. You can see all kinds of bones and rope used to seal the bodies in the burial bags. Grave robbers had visited the site before archaeologists made it there and bones are still strewn about on the trail. Plus, I don’t see what prevents people from stealing what remains, besides of course respect for the dead. Day 2 was more touring of the valley and a stop at the condor viewing platform. We managed to see some condors while we were walking there but didn’t get great pictures because they were still too far away. While we were at the viewpoint, only one decided to show it’s face, but it was still a great view.

Back in Arequipa we had one day to spare before we had to return to Cusco only to get on an airplane. Crazy airline rules prevented us from skipping right to Lima. So we saw an alpaca factory (where they make the expensive stuff), had more ceviche and tried not to buy too many souvenirs before boarding a 10 hour, overnight bus back to Cusco. This morning we hung out downtown, it kinda felt like going home. We felt like seasoned pros of the city. Then to the airport and now we find ourselves in Lima once again. This time we are not venturing out into the city.