Floating Islands on Lake Titicaca

 

Today we were picked up at 7:30-they were right on time which was surprising.  Confusion because we took the elevator to the ground floor to be picked up, but everyone else met in the lobby on the 2nd floor.  So they were looking for us when we were already waiting by the door.  Anyway, it was a quick trip to the dock where we met our guide, Pabel, who spoke good English and seemed very knowledgeable.  We took a nice boat ride to a floating island.  The islands are made from the reeds that surround the lake by the Uros people.  We met the “President” of the island.  The island had 4 families on it for a total of 10 people.  The president was nice, and funny.  He told us how the make the islands and a lot of other stuff.  At one point during his talk another guy walked up holding a dead pelican, which seemed to catch everyone off-guard, including the president.  We then went into one of the houses and put on some of their clothes for a picture.  Then they put on the hard sell for things they had knitted.  We liked a small tapestry but they wanted 200 Sols which seemed really high.  Instead we bought a pillow cover for 100 sols, which was also high, but not as bad.

Took a short ride in a reed boat, which was pushed by a regular motor boat, to the capital island.  This was kind of a scam and they pressured us to pay for this goofy boat ride. We did basically nothing on this island but wait to go on another ride to Tanquile.  They were basically holding us captive in hopes we’d buy some food or trinkets.  I was excited to see the floating islands and meet the people but unfortunately, while it is still cool and I’d recommend it, it very much is a tourist thing now.  In fact, I later learned that most of the Uros people don’t even live on the islands anymore.  They just go there during the day to perform for tourists, then return to their actual houses in Puno.

We got back on the boat for another nice ride-the weather was chilly but completely sunny, and the lake was calm and beautiful. This trip lasted about 1 hour 20 minutes before arriving at Tanquile.  Which is a regular (non floating) island.  Very reminiscent of a Greek island.  We Walked a steep path to the top while Pabel taught us some things, he was very conscious of the effort this was taking for us in the elevation and stopped several times while explaining the dating process and the meaning of the local’s clothes to us. We had a nice lunch outside before our trip back to Puno, which took about 1 hour 45 minutes on the boat. 

Once back in Puno we took an Uber to Lima Street-a pedestrian street filled with shops and restaurants.  Here we got more Sols, water and some souvenirs.  Ate at a brick oven pizza place and it was pretty good.  We grabbed a taxi and got back to the hotel with no issues.

Colca Canyon, Condors and COLD

 

Today we were picked up at 6:15 and we continued the bus tour from yesterday.  We bought a tablecloth in Yanque, which is a nice little town, they sure put on a show for the tourists, dancing around the square in traditional dress.  They also had llamas wearing sunglasses, which I thought was hilarious.

We then stopped at some viewpoints in the Cola Valley and then Canyon of the Condors.  At first not much was happening, They warned us that it often is too cold in the morning for the birds to fly. But then after about 1/2 an hour, the birds started appearing in the sky. These condors are huge and they're very cool to watch flying around. We must have watched for at least another 1/2 an hour before getting back on the bus.  

After a bit we stopped for lunch, which was pretty good. After about two more hours on the bus we arrived at the Lagunillas Lake overlook, near Puno.  It was REALLY windy and cold.   The elevation here is 14478 feet.  They had a gift shop which was a good way to get out of the cold.  We bought a couple of souvenirs here.  Before arriving in Puno we stopped for gas and a potty break. We got out of the bus and stepped into a cold gale.  Temp was 40, the real feel was19.  At the lake overlook the wind may actually have been stronger and the temp colder.

At the end of another long day we arrived in Puno, which is the city on Lake Titicaca.  We had a good dinner (with kind of poor service) in the hotel restaurant looking out at the lake and city through floor to ceiling windows, pretty nice (but still cold)

 

 

Bus tour to Yura and Chivay

 

Waited over an hour for our tour bus/van.  Today we drove up into the mountains, stopping at viewpoints on the other side of the volcanoes that surround Arequipa.  We saw a lot of wild Guanacos and some pretty nice scenery during the ride.  We stopped at the highest point of the trip-almost 16000 ft, both of us had headaches from elevation.  I had been chewing Coca leaves to stave off the elevation sickness, but it still got to me some.  

We also stopped and hung out with Llamas and Alpacas along the way.  We stopped in Yura and Chivay-where we had lunch.  We got to our hotel above the town of Chivay, and we had the rest of the afternoon ourselves.  Of course, I still felt like crap (elevation didn’t help) so I took a nap when we got there.  I woke up freezing, it turns out there was no heating system in the hotel.  

We just had a small heater that didn’t warm up room at all.  All we had to help us was heated mattress pads.  So if we were in bed it was fine, out of bed, not so much.  We just ate at hotel restaurant, all they had for heat there was a small wood burning stove, the workers were wearing winter coats, very bizarre.  The food was pretty good, just had to eat it before it got cold.  Poor night of sleep-air is VERY dry and I couldn’t get comfortable.

Just a long and tiring day for me, did see some good stuff though.

Tour of Arequipa

 

Even though we got in after 3 I woke up around 6:30. My cold is much worse and that may have contributed to my not being able to sleep as now a cough has started, yeah!  We went down for breakfast at 9:30 just before they stopped serving and then went back to bed.  We had a 2 o’clock tour of Arequipa, our driver was the same guy that picked us up from the bus at 2:30 AM.  Maya was our guide, and she was very good.  We went to a couple of viewpoints to see the see the city from above and the volcanoes that surround it.  We then walked around the city, Maya even helped us get cold medicine for me from the pharmacy. It's pretty nice, with interesting squares and, of course, cathedrals.  They have an interesting way of displaying Jesus on the cross that I've never seen before.  They put things on there that were used at the time of the crucifixion.  These include the spear used by the soldiers to check if he was alive, the ladder used to take him down, and other things like that.  We then completed the day with a tour of the Santa Catalina monastery, which was like its own city in the 1700s.  It’s amazing how big it is.  Each sister had their own little house, and there were streets and shops and everything.  All inside the walls of the monastery. 

On Maya’s recommendation, we had dinner at Chi Cha across the street from the Monastery, it was pretty good.  Deb saved me from using tap water to wash down the medicine we got at the pharmacy.  I was already sick enough.  Back to the hotel to medicate me and try to get sleep.  A good day, other than how crappy I felt.

Nazca

I'm happy to say that we had a decent breakfast buffet today. Best one so far. Jose picked us up and took us to the little airport for the Nazca lines flyover.

There were seven of us in a Cessna, which was cozy. From what we read online the night before, I was supposedly overweight, but no one said anything about it. This flight was really cool. Seeing the figures with our own eyes from above was awesome. The only issue I had was my headphones kind of sucked, so I was missing a lot of what the co-pilot/guide was telling us. This was probably made worse by the head cold that I had. Jose drove us back to the hotel, and this was interesting to say the least.

Traffic in Peru as a whole is crazy, with no one paying a bit of attention to the stop signs or the lanes. But this took it to a new level, Nazca is a small little dusty town and there are basically no traffic controls at all, other than speed bumps. We got stuck in one spot where it literally looked like bumper cars. A lot of little cars wedged up against each other at all angles. Jose decided to get around this traffic clot by taking a quick left into a gas station and running through the gas station to come out back onto the street on the other side of the cluster. Only problem with this maneuver was, besides the gas station being extremely narrow, another car was coming into the gas station opposite the way we were trying to exit and we almost had a head on collision. So that was fun.

After we survived the ride back to the hotel, we walked down to Mamashana restaurant nearby and had the best meal up to this point, by far. This restaurant had Taquenos appetizers which were absolutely amazing. They were light, fluffy, Filo-type dough filled with cheese. The entrees themselves were also pretty good. After lunch we walked around a little bit, got some souvenirs and stacked up on snacks and water at a grocery store for our next bus ride. This bus ride was supposed to be 10 hours long! As it turned out, this bus ride was actually more like 11 hours as we left about 3:30 and got in at 2:30. But there was some good views along the way, with the ocean crashing right up against the desert and the setting sun and dust adding color. It was after three by the time we got to our bed. Long day, but good (thankfully we had good food).

White Islands boat tour

Started with breakfast at the hotel, where we had cold eggs and hot milk. The food here is definitely different than what we are used to. Then a two-minute ride to the dock for our boat tour to Balestra Island. But the seas by that island were too rough, so instead we went to the White Islands. These are named the White Islands because they're covered in bird poop, so kind of disgusting and interesting at the same time. There were a lot of different kind of birds there and neat little sea cave we went partially into. On the way there and back we saw a lot of sea lions. Unlike in the Galapogos, these sea lions were in the water, actually moving, not acting like bum sleeping all over town. On the way we also saw the Candelabra geoglyph, which was pretty cool. It was a quick tour. Then we got back on the bus for another 4 hour ride, this time to Nazca. We got to Nazca and Jose met us. He's a young guy who speaks very good English and really seems to know his stuff. He's the best representative we've had so far on this trip. He got us to the hotel in time for dinner, and after last night's food adventure, we decided to just eat at the hotel restaurant. Despite the waiter really not speaking English very well, we actually had a really good meal, sitting out by the small pool. We then went to our room and relaxed before bed. Tomorrow we see the Nazca lines.

Bus to Paracas

This morning we were picked up by a shuttle that took us to the bus station, where we boarding a bus to Paracas. At the bus station we were kind of lost. We did find our way to where they took our bags, but our bags were overweight, the limit is 20kg per person. After we made a futile effort to move enough stuff into our backpacks and generally looked helpless and confused, the agent waived the charge just to get us away from him. There were a few stops on this bus ride and after the1st stop we discovered we were in someone seats, who knew they were assigned? It does show the seat in very small print on the bus tickets. We definitely looked like rookie travelers today. After long (about 4 hours) bus ride a guy met us for the short ride from the station to our hotel-the Paracas Sunset. It was bright and sunny when we got there so we decided to go out by the pool. But when we got out there, the sun was now behind the clouds so we stayed out there in the overcast for a while then decided to get something to eat by the beach. We read up on a couple of restaurants and decided to go to El Galeon because they were supposed to have good scallops. As it turns out the way they make scallions here is kind of disgusting so that didn’t go too well. They serve the scallops on the half shell and you end up tasting their nasty parts, definitely not what we were expecting. The calamari and Spanish rice were good but the shrimp that came with the rice was not. I tried a Pisco and ginger ale drink, which wasn’t great either. It pretty much tasted like flat ginger ale. To complete the experience, we were “waited on“ by two girls who were more interested in their phones than actually paying attention to us. We had to wave our arms and say “Cuenta” so they would give us a check and we could leave. Very disappointing. We then tried to find ice cream, but there was a strange lack of ice cream places in the area, considering it was very much a beachfront/touristy area. The one that we did find wasn’t very good. The cream was just not creamy, so after we each had one sample we passed on the place. We bought a big jug of water and then headed back to the room. Another early night. The weird thing is the sun goes down around six here right now, because it’s almost their winter solstice, so it feels much later than it actually is.