I did, however have a vague idea of what could be fun to do after we finished the Inca trail. And so, Joep took my suggestions and the morning after we got back to Cusco, we were up bright and early to catch a bus to Puno!
Puno is a town that sits on the banks of Lake Titicaca. Lake Titicaca is a lake located on the border of Peru and Bolivia. It is the “highest commercially navigable lake in the world” … I don’t know what this really means BUT it does sit at 3,811 m above sea level which is pretty darn high!
Puno sits on the Peru side of the lake and therefore seemed like the logical next stop on our adventure. And so, at 6:30am we arrived at the tour operators offices to get our bus! We had made an executive decision to get the ‘luxury’ bus rather than the cheaper option. It was a great choice! Firstly, when we got to our assigned seats on the bus, my seat was soaking wet! I spoke to the tour operator who promptly moved us … to the big first class seats downstairs! Nice. And so, for the next 8 hours we reclined in comfort in our first class seats (only 1 other couple was sitting first class with us) sporadically listening to the tour guide, napping and occasionally stepping out in the towns that the tour stopped at to explore.
It was a totally different experience to the 4 preceding days because the bus was filled with ‘mature’ people who clearly did not trek the 4 day trail. We figured this out by looking at the people however our suspicions were confirmed when I was getting off the bus at one stop. I groaned as I stepped down due to the severe muscle pain I was in after the trek (hey don’t judge me. I made it to the top but I never said it didn’t hurt.) anyway … the woman getting off behind me also groaned and then said to me ‘I know the feeling!’ Joep proceeded to ask her ‘Oh, did you go to Machu Picchu?’ She said ‘Yes and all those stairs killed me!’ Joep said ‘Yes, same for us. The 2nd day was the hardest right?’ To which she responded ‘Only we only caught the bus up 1 day, not 2.’ Huh? What? Yes. Her legs were sore from getting the bus to Machu Picchu and walking around the ruins!! Joep and I looked smugly at each other and proceeded to tell our war stories about the 4-day trek we had just finished. Modest, we are not.
Basking in the admiration of our fellow bus passengers, we thoroughly enjoyed the day’s journey to Puno with buffet lunch included … the entertainment at lunch was a guy playing pan flute. Joep was disgusted at how poor his pan flute playing skills were and I had to stop him from getting his own pan flute out to show him how it was done. We arrived in Puno at around 7pm and we were met at the bus terminal by a guy from our hotel. The staff at Amaru I had kindly booked us into their sister hotel in Puno for a few nights and it was just what the doctor ordered! That night we had a night of pure R&R and managed to do a grand total of … nothing. It was lovely! The following morning we were awake bright and early and ready to check out Puno! First stop? Downtown. We walked down and our first impressions were not the best. The city is not as clean or as easy on the eye as Cusco. It is also full of a lot more hustle and bustle.
However, the longer we walked around, the more the city grew on us! It really has a lot of life about it. And there are daily outdoor markets all over the place! We wandered through these markets on our way to the harbor. Upon arrival at the harbor we were very quickly ushered onto a taxi boat that would take us out to the Floating Islands of Uros. So these are a group of 42 artificial islands that are made out of the floating totora reeds that grow in the shallow waters of Lake Titicaca. The islands were originally created for defensive purposes because they could be moved if a threat arose and historically people lived on these islands. Some people claim that they still do live on the islands but there is also the nasty rumour going around that the people pretend to live out there for tourist purposes but actually come onto land at night time. The horror!! Either way, the islands have become a major tourist attraction and we felt it as soon as we got near the harbour!
Despite how touristy the islands are, it was lovely to check them out. The boat ride out was glorious thanks to a beautiful sunny day, we got to hear a whole speech about how the islands are made and maintained (we both heard it but only Joep understood it … it was entirely in Spanish … I zoned out), we then got to wander around a bit and some people went on a little trip in a traditional reed boat which Joep and I skipped in favour of eating icecream and vegging out. It was definitely the better option. Once very funny thing we found was that there are solar panels on the huts out on the islands! Imagine how excited Joep was about this!
After checking out the islands and getting a great view of the lake we headed back to Puno in the late afternoon. We had a brief administrative stop at a travel agent before grabbing a bottle of champagne and a whole roast chicken (true story … it was huge … we didn’t realize when we ordered it that we were ordering enough food for an entire family. Lesson learned. But not really because it was delicious!). We then headed back to the gardens in our hotels to eat lunch and play a game of gin. Now this is vacation!
If you have been reading closely you will know that by now it is New Years Eve. This had not slipped our minds and we had dinner reservations at a lovely restaurant on the main street of Puno called Color. After a very relaxing afternoon, we got ourselves glammed up (well, as glamorous as you can look on such a trip) and headed out for an exciting NYE celebration. Why so exciting? Weeeeeell, Tobias & Arite from the Inca trek were in Puno as well! We had exchanged contact details and arranged to meet up for a fun New Years celebration! Exciting!
Joep and I arrived at the restaurant and were pleased to see that it was quite up-market. Within minutes of being seated and ordering wine, we began chatting with an older American couple sitting nearby. The conversations were hilarious and we are both annoyed at ourselves for not getting their names … whoops. They knew both of our names. Ah well. It was lovely to have some laughs and it made us not realize how late Tobias and Arite were. By the time they arrived we had almost given up on them – Turns out they were at another restaurant of the same name nearby! Yikes!
Thankfully they found us though because the evening that following was positively hilarious! We ate a good meal, we had a lot of wine and cocktails and we enjoyed a great street parade right on the street below us!
Afterwards we headed out to a great little bar where beers and more cocktails were consumed and the atmosphere was fantastic!! We kept an eye on the time and at midnight we went out to the street to see how the Peruvians celebrate New Years (I forgot to mention that on Christmas Eve in Cusco, there were literally thousands of fireworks going off in the city … it sounded like a war zone!) … sure enough, there were fireworks! It was actually kind of scary. Even more so because the people in the bar we were at were largely foreigners who clearly thought the right to set off fireworks was just the best thing ever (I have never in my life set off a firework …) so there were things flying everywhere!
I hid down an alley way while Joep danced around fearless. When all the craziness subsided and we had all had a few drinks out of the bottle of champagne that Tobias had in his backpack (go Germany!) we decided it was home time. Tobias & Arite had an early bus to catch and so did we … alas we were going in different directions. But what a way to ring in 2011!
The following morning with a slight (for me) / significant (for Joep) hangover, we had a small sleep in before getting our 7:30am bus heading to La Paz! After a few hours of driving we hit the border of Peru & Bolivia. It was the most hilarious border crossing I have ever experienced. We got off the bus, walked to one office, filled in a form, waited in line, got the form stamped. We then walked to another office, gave them the stamped form and got another form. We then had to walk 5 minutes up the street to cross the border (yes, we walked across the border) where we got our next form stamped, had a chat with the guard about koala’s and wombats and then we were all set for Bolivia. Jeez. Once across the border, our next stop was Copacabana. Not the famous one that the song is about. The Bolivian one on the shores of Lake Titicaca.
We had made an executive decision the day before to go straight through Copacabana to La Paz rather than staying overnight. It was a good choice. The town is really lovely and it was a beautiful day but the 1.5 hour lunch stop we had there was more than enough time to soak up the atmosphere and realize that is it a total tourist town.
Back on the bus, we drove for a bit before disembarking again because we had to cross a river. Us passangers went on a small dinky little boat while the bus drove onto a barge that was POLED across the river by kids! They make them tough in Bolivia! The rest of the bus ride was uneventful and as we arrived in La Paz in the early hours of the evening we were literally speechless. The first glimpse you get of La Paz is from the town El Alto which sits above La Paz on the mountain. The city sprawls beneath you stopping only when it reaches the surrounding mountains. It is just beautiful. We started to get very excited. Especially because we had decided to book a suite in the hotel … we figured we had earned it after doing the Inca trail.
Upon arrival at the bus depot we headed straight to the hotel where we were treated to the first bit of real luxury of our trip … and we loooooooved it. The only problem was that it was January 1 which is a national holiday meaning everything in the city is closed. After wandering around for some time we finally settled on a small, very dodgy looking Chinese restaurant for dinner. My food was delicious! Joep’s was … less so. It also left him feeling a bit worse for wear. Home time. The rest of the night was spent lounging around our luxury suite feeling very spoiled!
Sunday morning we slept in and enjoyed a long breakfast at the hotel before heading out to explore the city. After acclimatizing to the altitude in Cusco we thought La Paz would be a breeze. It wasn’t. We didn’t get sick but boy were we breathless all the time!
OK so a brief geography lesson – La Paz is actually called Nuestra Señora de La Paz which is Spanish for ‘Our Lady of Peace’. It is the ‘administrative capital’ of Bolivia. Not the capital. Sucre is the official capital. The city is located at 3,660m above sea level which is a good 300m higher than Cusco … hence the breathlessness! Even more, the city sits in a "bowl" surrounded by the high mountains of the altiplano and as it grows, it climbs the hills, resulting in varying elevations from 3,000 meters to 4,100 meters. Phew!
So on day one, we puffed our way around the city realising just how thin the air up there was. We had planned on visiting travel agents and planning our week but everything was closed for the holidays so instead we ended up sitting in a restaurant near Plaza de San Francisco enjoying a good meal and a few drinks. Interestingly, this restaurant doubled as a tour agency for Luna Travel a company that arranges bike rides down the ‘World’s Most Deadly Road’ – aka “Death Road”. You can’t make this stuff up. So back a few year ago, this road that leads to the town of Coroico about 3 hours drive from La Paz, was voted ‘The World’s Most Dangerous Road’ because of the extremely high number of fatalities that occurred on it regularly. Literally bus loads of people have plummeted to their death down the 3,000m drop off the side of this road. Yikes.
Since winning the ‘award’, an alternative road has been built that is much safer. However the old road is still there and now tourists go to see it. The big thing to do is to mountain bike down this road. Sounds pretty cool right? I thought it sounded a bit too dangerous. Joep thought it sounded cool and was considering doing it. I then read him the death statistics regarding tourists. He changed his mind. He had also read the brochure at the restaurant for Luna’s which claimed ‘We’re not #1 but we are the best!’ and other gems like ‘Despite what you may have heard, safety is important to us!’ … decision made. No biking. But we were happy to go on a private tour down the road in a car!! In hindsight, I am not sure if this is better than the first option.
Either way, we arranged the tour and then enjoyed a lovely afternoon wandering around the city and some of the more central markets before dashing back to the hotel to change for our evening activity. We were going to watch the wrestling! Yes. Bolivian wrestling. It was held in a hall up in El Alto and we caught the bus up and got settled in our ring side seats. The show was … well, it was kind of weird! It was highly entertaining I must say, but when you see women jump into the wrestling ring and get ‘beaten up’ by huge men it all just feels a bit wrong. The children in the audience didn’t think so though. They loved it! We were entertained and it was certainly a spectacle worth seeing. After enjoying the show we headed back down to the town where we grabbed some roast chicken (again … its delicious!) and reclined in comfort. Relaxed.
Monday rolled around and we had nothing planned except soaking up the city. It was glorious. We headed out to Sopocachi (which is our favourite part of La Paz!) for a long lunch, soaked up the rays, did a spot of shopping and just enjoyed the city and the beautiful weather. After a late evening siesta at the hotel we headed back to Sopocachi for a fancy dinner at le Comedie Arte Café. It has rave reviews – they are well deserved. It was a phenomenal meal.
After a day of R&R, Tuesday was another busy day. We were up early to head out on our tour of Death Road. Yikes. The weather was a bit gloomy so we were glad to be snug inside the car. In addition, the views were just amazing! Once we got onto Death Road we quickly began to understand why so many people die. It is seriously a dangerous road. Our guide was a local guy and he was lovely. We stopped many times away and he would often point out things like ‘This is the Israeli corner. 2 years ago an Israeli girl died here.’ Or ‘This is the Italian corner. An Italian boy died here.’ Jeez. We were glad we didn’t bike. It was, however, really amazing to look out at the views and the surrounding rain forest was beautiful! Still, we were happy to get off the Death Road and arrive safely in Coroico. Coroico is a small town in the ‘Yungas’ which is a stretch of forest along the eastern slope of the Andes mountains from southeastern Peru through central Bolivia. It is a lovely, tiny town tucked into the mountains and we had a bit of exploring time around lunch.
We also headed out to see a few beautfiul waterfalls nearby and some coca plantations. It was great to get out of the city for the day ad we arrived back in La Paz late that afternoon feeling very content.
That night we had decided to get the night bus from La Paz to Sucre. The bus was scheduled to leave at 6:45pm and would take 12-14 hours. We waited patiently at the bus stop for almost 2 hours. We were convinced our bus wasn’t coming but kept being reassured by the company employees that it was on its way. Finally, at 8:45pm we were comfortably seated and ready to go. We had ‘sleeper seats’ which are like a business class seat on a plane. Unfortunately they were a bit too small for Joep but at the start of the bus ride this was no issue. After about 20 minutes of driving, the bus came to a stop. Noone knew what was happening but within minutes there was a teenaged boy belting out pop tunes and dancing up and down the aisle. Huh? While this was happening, a blind man appeared next to Joep tapping his foot with his stick and asking for money. Whaaaaat?? Finally, a very enthusiastic man who smelled very bad was trying to sell us chocolate bars. OK, enough. Joep and I were in hysterics laughing. We had no idea what was going on and as quickly as it all started, it stopped again. It was crazy! Thankfully all the non-passengers left the bus and before too long we were on our way again.
I reclined and fell asleep immediately. When I awoke, 9 hours later, the scenery going past my window was beautiful! I stretched luxuriously and turned to Joep. Joep was glaring at me. His first words were ‘I have been watching you all night and you look so comfortable.’ Poor Joep had barely slept a wink. His seat was too small and he was uncomfortable. I was full of energy and hopped up to go to the bathroom to freshen up. At this point let me just say that ‘freshening up’ in the bathroom of a speeding bus as it curves around mountain roads is quite the challenge. I was falling all over the place and came out of the bathroom laughing to myself like a crazy woman before regailing Joep with the stories of the challenge.
Within the hour we were in Sucre (that is how fast our bus driver was!) and boy was Joep happy to be there. Upon arrival at the bus depot we grabbed our bags and taxi’d it downtown. While in the taxi Joep started laughing and pointed to the front of the car. I looked. Something looked weird. It took a second to register … the steering was on the left side of the car which was correct. But the speedometer and all the other important driving stuff was still on the right side of the car!! Whaaaat?? Thankfully our driver was in better condition than his car and he got us safely to our restaurant of choice. We had picked a spot that served a full English breakfast. It was a great choice! While waiting for our meal we realized it was owned by a Dutch guy which pleased Joep greatly.
After pigging out for a loooong while, we headed around the town to find a hotel for the night. We had thought we might only stay the day in Sucre and then by night bus to somewhere new. Joep’s exhaustion was one factor in changing our minds however the biggest factor was that our first impression of Sucre was REALLY good. The city is just beautiful! We found a gorgeous little hotel nearby and got settled. We freshened up, Joep had a quick nap and then we wandered out to enjoy the town. Great choice. The sun was shining, the city is beautiful and we were in high spirits!
Sucre is all white buildings with clay roof tops. It is like a little Mediterranean town. Delicious. We spent the next 24 hours talking constantly about how beautiful the town was, eating, drinking, soaking up the sun and being completely relaxed. We were also treated to a walk up to the top of the police station which has the best views in the city! This was most definitely a highlight! After the hustle and bustle of La Paz, Sucre was a welcome bit of peace and quiet. We absolutely LOVED Sucre and highly recommend it to everyone!
Unfortunately our time in Bolivia was running out and, having abandoned the whole ‘night bus’ idea due to Joep’s ridiculous height, we booked flights back to La Paz the following afternoon. We inadvertantly booked business class flights which was a pleasant surprise when we boarded!
Our last night in La Paz was spent in a beautiful apartment above le Comedie Arte Café in Sopocachi. That is, without a doubt, our favourite area of La Paz. It is so hip and clean and the restaurants are great as is the shopping … content sigh. We felt right at home. We wandered back to our ‘usual’ coffee shop for coffee and cake before gearing up for a big dinner – There was an Argentinean steakhouse that we had been dying to try. We were not disappointed. It was a total meat fest. Before the meal ended we both had the meat sweats and could barely even finish our second bottle of wine (oh how I love being on vacation ..).
It was a great last dinner in La Paz and, after chilling out in Sopocachi at our usual coffee shop the following morning, we were off to the airport to catch our flight for our last night in Lima, Peru.
During the drive to the airport, our taxi driver spent the entire time fixing his steering wheel. He wasn’t even watching the road most of the time but steering with his knees whilst tinkering with the steering wheel that he was slowly pulling apart – I was petrified yet strangely amused at the same time. Once again, my fears were unfounded and we made it safely to the airport where we boarded our flight to Lima. The views from the plane were, once again, beautiful! I never take photo’s from the plane window but this time I had to.
Upon arrival in Lima we had decided we were going out in style and, after enjoying a cocktail in our hotel bar (wonderful hotel!) we headed out to dinner. Joep had picked the restaurant after discussing with the hotel maitre d. It. Was. Incredible. Amazing seafood, amazing cocktails, delicious wines, and that was all before we even considered dessert! Oh we surely went out in style.
We had a quick dash around the city and decided that, whilst Lima is very nice, the advice I received to not stay very long in Lima was good advice. The restaurants seem amazing (and we had great eating experiences!) but at the end of the day it is just another big city and lacks much of the charm of the other cities we experienced on this trip.
And so, after an incredible last supper and a great night of sleep, we were back in the air and homeward bound. It was, without a doubt, one of the most incredible vacations we have had yet. We are so looking forward to exploring a bit more of South America in the future!
Even more than that, we are so looking forward to what 2011 has to bring for us. 2010 was one of the best years ever. We loved spending the year exploring Canada, we got engaged (!!), we’ve made some amazing friends, we have both had some very big career successes and we are happier than ever! We really are incredibly lucky and I, for one, cannot wait to see what 2011 has in store for us … it promises to be a very exciting year!
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