And so to the place which has made schoolchildren laugh for decades... Lake Titicaca. Lulled into a false sense of security by the smooth efficiency of my Machu Picchu trip, I booked with the same agency to travel by bus to Puno for my weekend on Lake Titicaca... First lesson of travelling, don't make assumptions! An overnight bus on Friday 20 April, leaving Cusco at 9.30 pm and arriving in Puno at 4am was not exactly an appealing prospect, but when I arrived at the bus station and saw how smart and comfortable the bus looked, I felt I should be able to manage a couple of hours' sleep. What I hadn't allowed for was the bony Parisian who found himself sitting next to me. He looked down his fastidious little nose when he realized his master plan to spread out over two seats was to be thwarted by the great unwashed hordes of fellow travellers. To register his disgust, he waited until I was nodding off, then began a great performance of twisting, turning and flailing his razor-sharp elbows. Thankfully, exhaustion finally set in and I snatched a little sleep. The bus arrived in Puno on time, but unfortunately my meet-and-greet person did not turn up until 6am.
Two hours in a bus station alone is a pretty scary prospect anywhere in the world and I was sucking in my stomach muscles so that my precious money belt would be subtly absorbed into the rolls of fat and nobody would notice it and think to steal it - Traveller tip No 2, but only for fat travellers of course. I have to say though that the bus station at Puno was not too bad. It was full of a real mixed bag of people - peasant women with huge colourful bundles, some of which contained goods to sell and others which contained babies, the compulsory smattering of rag-tag backpackers, expectant hotel touts and taxi drivers, but nobody was drunk, abusive or overly insistent and intimidating.
Thankfully, I'd invested in a Janet Evanovich novel as an impulse buy before leaving Cusco, so I enjoyed the kick-ass adventures of Stephanie Plum until Mr Fixit, alias Albert, turned up at 6 to whisk me off to start my trip with breakfast in a truly seedy hotel. It was the kind of place where he had to screw in the one working lightbulb in the place above my table before I could start eating. If this trip is a voyage of discovery about myself as much as anything else, one thing I have discovered very early on is that even for reasons of economy, I can no longer tolerate the kind of rudimentary conditions my 20-year-old self happily laughed off.
I actually embarked upon the trip four hours after arriving in Puno. I have to say, I have slightly mixed feelings about the whole experience. Titicaca itself is beautiful - the altitude, the atmosphere and the sheer scale of it is amazing - but the whole tourist rigmarole set up there made me feel a little uncomfortable. For example, first we went to the floating islands of the Uros, built using layers of the reeds which grow in Titicaca. The colourfully dressed islanders sit around with their slightly tacky handicrafts arrayed before them and wait for us to buy them. Meanwhile, we admire their reed houses, go on one of their reed boats, which look rather like straw viking boats, with fierce animal heads at the helm, and wobble around their reed islands finding it hard to take in the idea that these people actually live here because the whole thing has a real theme park feel to it.
From these islands, we made our way to Amantani - a real island on the Peruvian side of the lake. The boat trip was lovely and I really came to appreciate my group of fellow travellers - a truly mixed bunch, including a mad Russian who insisted he was on a diet of LSD and tequila, some charming Argentinian women, a lone Czech traveller who clearly had not seen a washing machine for some months, a father and son from North Carolina who spoke like characters from Gone With the Wind but had some pretty radical political views and little ol' me. That is one of the benefits of travelling alone - you get chatting to all sorts of people but you don't have to put up with their idiosyncracies for any longer than you choose. Anyway, on Amantani we were divided up between the local families who then provided us with bed and board until our departure at 8am on Sunday morning.
I shared with two of the Argentinians, which was good for my Spanish and my sanity as the family seemed not to have read the small print about this being a cultural exchange which is how our guide explained the setup - they were pretty monosyllabic and merely put down our food then left us to our own devices. The food was all vegetarian and delicious and we needed to be well fed to tackle walking up all these fairly steep hills to explore the island. The sunset was quite spectacular, but then I was glad I had been told to bring a torch because after dark, there was no electricity in our bit of the island, and although the locals sprang around like wild goats, I needed my trusty torch in hand to teeter precariously down to the toilet block without gatecrashing the cow shed next door. One thing that really struck me there was the total silence - only the noise of cows and chickens and nothing else. As I lay there before going to sleep, the silence was palpable and almost oppressive and I realized that although I complain, I actually miss the background buzz and bustle of life in a town.
Anyway, the next touristy bit came that evening when our families dressed us in local costume and we went down to the main square for a dance and a party. OK, it was not exactly wild and abandoned - we were tucked up by around 10 - but it just felt a bit "laid on for the tourists" and I could have done without it.
Next day we visited another island - Taquile - which is famous for its weaving. The set-up there seemed a little better as they have formed a cooperative so the whole community shares in the money raised from the tourists. I had been dreading this island as I read there were 550 steps up from the harbour to the main square. Thankfully though, we were set down at the island's second harbour and we made our way round and round the island along a circuitious track until we reached all the weaving then after a lunch of fresh fish from Titicaca, which was delicious, we only had to go down the 550 steps. Just seeing the locals labour up them with their huge bundles made me feel exhausted and breathless.
The boat trip back to Puno was a delight and I managed to avoid the British disease of lying out in the sun too long, so I now have a little bit of colour, but that colour isn't glow-in-the-dark sunburn red!
Puno itself is a bit of a dump. Everywhere there is construction work and little moto-taxis zip everywhere, but I had a final wander around there before making my way back to my second home - the bus station, where I safely negotiated paying the 1 sol of duty and getting on the right bus. These little achievements mean a lot to someone starting out on the solo travel thang!
Hopefully in my next entry I'll talk a bit more about every day life in Cusco, as that is really interesting and I am certainly growing to like this place a lot.
