Oruro

An easy four hour bus from la pas landed us in oruro…not really somewhere we wanted to visit, but just a city to break up the journey to sucre from. There was a lot of flooding around the city so it looked super sketch when we were rolling, but the city center turned out to be descent with some nice plazas and a movie theater that we frequented till we could leave the following night. The bus to sucre was pretty hellish, it left at ten at night and arrived at six the following morning. We got panoramic seats at the front of the bus which is usually great for the views, being a full moon night, but we were soon introduced to a ceaseless loud squeaking coming from the rooftop above our heads and an alarm that sounded out every time the driver went over 100km right in front of us which was way too frequent. I wrapped everything I could around my ears to deaden the noise and blasted music for the remainder of my sleepless night. Needless to say, Bolivia was pretty much biting it thus far.

La Paz

Spring managed to get sick again upon our arrival to la paz, so we not much really went down on that visit. The lonely planet aka the lonely biter lead us astray by suggesting a “super hygienic” salad spot that somehow we thought would be legit and totally wasn’t. La paz does have some great shopping though however, especially music, which is sold on mp3 disk, each containing about 200 songs…for about five dollars I racked up a good 2000 tracks of folklorica, retro latin rock, and some 80’s hits…pretty dope! Another interesting thing in la paz are the “witches markets” which are basically strange stalls selling random herbs and potions that do everything from cure cancer to get you laid…along with super bazaar dried llama fetuses that are supposed to be buried under your house for good luck.

Copacabana

Copacabana was kind of what I was expecting puno to be…small and touristy and right on the water. The vibe in general was a lot more hippie, with long haired dudes and dread locks and grungy musician/artist types hanging about selling stuff on the street. The town itself didn’t have a whole lot to offer except and descent plaza and one of the creepiest churches ive ever seen. We got used to using the boliviano, and just hung out for a couple days waiting for the weather to clear so we could go to Isla del sol, which it never did, so we left for la paz with plans to try again on our way back.

Crossing the border to bolivia

Arriving back in puno from the islands, we decided to go to the bolivian consulate to see how much the visas would be. What we found out was not only did the visa cost $135 each, but we would also need to have copies of our passports, airline tickets, bank statements, a reservation in Bolivia, and passport photos. It was a huge pain in the ass to the say the least, and took us two days to organize before the secretary would finally stamp our passports. But in retrospect I think it was the right thing to do, instead of arriving at the border clueless, with nothing in order, and having the bus leave us there, which did happen to a few people sitting next to us.

Isla Tequile

After an hour walk the following morning in the rain, we arrived at the local harbor to catch another boat an hour further to the island of tequila. The boat dropped us off at the bottom of a few hundred foot tall staircase which we huffed and puffed up battling the altitude with every step. A local guide met us at the top and shopped us around to different families until we found a place that hadn’t flooded in the previous nights rainstorm. Tequile in comparison to amantani was far more developed with a tourist infrastructure of restaurants and whatnots and a central handicraft market where they sold excellent island made textiles. Tour groups would pour in around lunch, but after a few hours the island was basically tourist free for those spending the night.

The day we arrived on tequile there happened to be another island wide festival. It consisted mostly of various groups of marching bands with drums and flutes accompanied by dancing women in amazingly colorful costumes. The men dressed all in black with some colorful bags and hats, while the women looked like giant flowers, each wearing about ten petticoats and twirling balls of yarn. There was a great view from one of the rooftops overlooking the central plaza and down into one of the valleys where we could see the various parades come bouncing through, do their song and dance, and continue on around the island. It was a beautiful island in general, with plenty of incan terracing and ancient stone trails around the island, but certainly not as remote and heavenly as its neighbor amantani.

Amantani

After a four hour boat ride from puno, we arrived at the island of amantani. There are no hotels on the island, so the only place to stay is with a family. Each family has an extra room and shares having guests within their community. It was a wonderful system, because it kept the communities developing equally from the incoming cash, and didn’t allow for any large scale development projects in form of ugly large hotels. The family that we stayed with were wonderful. They we about our age, with a super cute and happy little baby boy named kleebear. They prepared us delicious traditional meals and introduced us to some of the native herbs, such as moonya, which is a wonderful mint like plant used for teas. It was probably the most authentic experience we had in peru in terms of seeing how rural Peruvians live.
The island itself was like heaven. There were no cars or roads, which was a great change of pace, so the only way to get around the island was to walk the cobble stone paths that connected the ten communities of the island. The entire island was terraced by incans over the past thousand years and was covered in gorgeous gardens and flowers. The landscape was super rocky, with two major mountains at either end of the island. The first mountain was dedicated to pachamama(mother earth) and the other to papamama(father earth). The people of the island were super friendly and wore traditional dress which was great for photographs.
The day after we arrived there happened to be another island wide festival that involved amazingly elaborate and colorful costumes, dancing, and very quiet music. Hundreds of local people showed up around the central plaza parading in one community at time, each having a special dance they prepared for the island wide dance contest that took up most the afternoon. When we got too hot we went down to lake Titicaca and dipped in the ice fresh waters and walked back to our families abode to watch another spectacular afternoon storm roll dramatically across the lake.

Puno / Sillustani / Islas Flotantes

From cabanoconde we had to back track all the way to Arequipa to get a ride back to puno…which happened to be along the same road but had no connecting buses. It was another beautiful bus ride though, through the vast high desert plains pass breathtakingly beautiful lakes with flamingos and open ranges of alpacas grazing. Our first views of puno were a big surprise, coming over the mountain to find a valley densely populated and developed…not exactly what I had in mind when I envisioned visiting lake titicaca. But the town turned out to be alright, with some descent shopping and excellent restaurants, but not much focus on the lake itself, having the city center about a mile from it.
We did go on an excellent tour though to the funerary towers of sillustani. The towers themselves were impressive indeed, some up to thirty feet tall, but what really made it special was the location looking out over lake Titicaca and some gorgeous terraced hillsides and islands. We stopped at an amazing household as well on the way back that was traditional for the area and made entirely of rock…each family created a compound of sorts with an exterior fence with archway entrances and separate buildings for sleeping, cooking, and so on…even the pet guinea pigs had their own little stone houses with thatched roofs and stone fences…it was entirely adorable…something out of a fairytale, with little doorways about chest high and llamas out front to welcome you in…completely unique to anything we’ve seen thus far in peru.
Another jaunt out from puno was to the famous reed floating islands. Despite their utter over exploitation by tourism, the islands were still pretty amazing. There are about sixty islands in total out in the reeds about an hour from puno by boat. Each island beckons you over with a handful of inhabitants, mostly women in neon “traditional” garb. The visit consist mostly of brief explanation of how the islands stay afloat, basically by fastening the reed root structures together and then cross staking piles of more reeds on top, followed by attempts to sell the tourist handicrafts made from reeds and other textiles, and then a little joy ride around to some other islands via a huge reed boat. The enjoyment of the tour is based largely on which islands you get to visit…some islands we stopped at were nothing but tourist traps with only restaurants and souvenirs, while other were magical places with gardens, flamingos, cute little reed huts, and at least a sense of how these people lived traditionally. Basically, the islands were incredible in their ingenuity and unique aesthetic, but tragic in any sort of social studies sense.

Colca Canyon / Chilca / Cabanoconde

We finally felt better enough to continue our journey onward, towards the world’s deepest canyon. It was a gorgeous four hour bus ride from Arequipa through high desert country side filled with cactuses, yellow high mountain plains, 18,000ft snowcapped volcanoes, incredible moss filled valleys with streams running through and alpacas grazing, dusty little villages, and even a few wild pecunias. We got off in the charming little city of chilca. It was the first place we visited where many of the women wore traditional handmade dress including fabulous embroidered hats, jackets, and skirts. Every town in peru seems to have a beautiful central plaza, and this little town was no exception. We rented bicycles one day and peddled to the local hotsprings a couple miles outside of town nestled in a gorgeous little rocky valley with a river running through it. The hotspring were fantastic, it was a huge place with multiple swimming pool size tubs and very few tourists…at least early in the day when we arrived. It was a great place to relax for the day, soak up some sun, which was a little too easy at that altitude, and sluff off the layers of dead skin and grim we had been collecting since our arrival.
A few rugged hours further on a crowded bus we made our way along the bumpy dirt road to Cabanaconde. Along the way we passed extensive Incan terracing, still used for agriculture, many little villages, a few tunnels blown through the mountain sides, a condor lookout at 4,800 meters, and views of the world’s deepest canyon. We arrived in Cabonaconde to a band rehearsing for that nights festival, we got an awesome room with panoramic views over the plaza where the festival was to held and scenic mountain range surrounding the town. While the locals gathered for the festival we went on a scenic hike out to the canyon edge where we could see clearly down to the tourist oasis at the bottom. However spectacular the setting was, the canyon didn’t seem too impressive in comparison to say the grand canyon, and not as vast, probably because it was more the convergence of two huge mountains more than anything I would necessarily call a canyon…but hey, we did see some condors. One interesting thing about the area was their use of small scale canals to channel water around…it was gorgeous because out of nowhere it seemed little waterfalls and creeks would rush down the hill sides passing through the boulders, green grass, and grazing sheep…the whole scene on the outskirts of town was very pastoral and lovely. Making our way back to the plaza we could here the music blaring from the hillsides…it was a very repetitive kind of call and response of drums and horns between two sets of musicians that went on for hours…one was a bit mellower which chilled out the twirling dancers and the other was pretty hype. The dance was consistent throughout the night, always in a large circle, with twirling, and occasional paradings around the plaza. It was very entertaining for sure though, and a visual splendor indeed as most all the participants were dressed in their finest ornate hand stitched colorful traditional outfits. Drinking was a must, and the kids carried on the tradition of water balloons, dye throwing, and spray foam. The event carried on late into the night with more and more people pouring in from the hillsides and neighboring villages…a fabulous festival experience indeed!
The ride back to chilca the following morning was a dreadful experience…the bus was packed with people returning to their villages from the festival so we had to stand for three hours on the super bumpy winding mountain dirt road after a night of basically not sleeping…not cool…but we made it…and spent the next two days at the hotsprings.