Aside from the name, which I can't help but laugh at childishly, Puno's a good place to break up the trip to Bolivia. Sitting on the Peruvian shore of Lake Titicaca - the world's highest navigable lake, at 3,860m - there isn't a great deal to do here, but that was what the doctor ordered after a few post-trail fun nights in Cuzco.
You can take the bus here, and if I was being sensible with my money I'd have done that. But the train ride is said to be one of the world's finest so I had to see for myself. At $220 it had to be pretty good, and it was. The route snakes alongside the Huatanay river and up to, and across, the Andean plains as it heads south. It reminded me a lot of the Andean scenery when Ed and I left El Calafate to bus it towards Ushuaia.
You pass farming communities constantly, and one thing that was noticeable was that it was usually women, dressed up in the heavy traditional Quechua dress, working the fields. Now is harvest time, and you see piles of wheat in a wigwam shape, tied towards the top, standing like rows of sentries. Perhaps the way these piles point towards the sun is a hangover from the Incan sun worshipping days, but more likely it's not...
Kids run and wave as the train goes past, as no doubt they do every day. And no doubt they show the same unbridled enthusiasm every day that they did the first time. Which is great!
From the outside deck of the train you can sit back, put your feet up and watch it all roll by. They gave us a first class meal, and a "fashion show" for which read a couple of hot chicks were modelling scarves and gloves made from alpaca wool, which we were kindly invited to buy.
There was also some live Peruvian music but this was lost on me. I'm not the world's biggest fan of panpipe music, and Peru's the wrong place for me to be on that score. But all round, I got to see and absorb a lot more than I would have done through a bus window, and the food was amazing. Definitely worth it.
The main tourist attraction in Puno is a trip to Uros - the floating islands. The Uros people originally started constructing these raft islands, with their villages on, to prevent attacks by the Incas, which gives you an idea how long they've been there. The 42 islands are made from totora reeds, with straw huts sitting atop. They replace the reeds every 15 days, to stop the "ground" rotting.
Nearly everything is made from reeds. It's not all traditional, though - they also have solar panels and electrical goods like TVs. I didn't see a Playstation but you never know. They're chasing the tourist dollar now, big time. Every island has the usual array of stuff, bracelets etc, for sale, and they tried to have us believe, on one island, that they only get visited 3 times in a month. We saw 2 other trips that day, and I don't think they only take visitors one day in the month...
Apart from that I chilled out in Puno. I was supposed to go to Bolivia today, but there's been a national strike there for 2 days. I'm told this is something I will get used to in Bolivia - things taking an unpredictable amount of time. So the best bet is not to make any cast-iron plans. It is what it is, and I don't have any meetings to make on Monday morning....
You can take the bus here, and if I was being sensible with my money I'd have done that. But the train ride is said to be one of the world's finest so I had to see for myself. At $220 it had to be pretty good, and it was. The route snakes alongside the Huatanay river and up to, and across, the Andean plains as it heads south. It reminded me a lot of the Andean scenery when Ed and I left El Calafate to bus it towards Ushuaia.
You pass farming communities constantly, and one thing that was noticeable was that it was usually women, dressed up in the heavy traditional Quechua dress, working the fields. Now is harvest time, and you see piles of wheat in a wigwam shape, tied towards the top, standing like rows of sentries. Perhaps the way these piles point towards the sun is a hangover from the Incan sun worshipping days, but more likely it's not...
Kids run and wave as the train goes past, as no doubt they do every day. And no doubt they show the same unbridled enthusiasm every day that they did the first time. Which is great!
From the outside deck of the train you can sit back, put your feet up and watch it all roll by. They gave us a first class meal, and a "fashion show" for which read a couple of hot chicks were modelling scarves and gloves made from alpaca wool, which we were kindly invited to buy.
There was also some live Peruvian music but this was lost on me. I'm not the world's biggest fan of panpipe music, and Peru's the wrong place for me to be on that score. But all round, I got to see and absorb a lot more than I would have done through a bus window, and the food was amazing. Definitely worth it.
The main tourist attraction in Puno is a trip to Uros - the floating islands. The Uros people originally started constructing these raft islands, with their villages on, to prevent attacks by the Incas, which gives you an idea how long they've been there. The 42 islands are made from totora reeds, with straw huts sitting atop. They replace the reeds every 15 days, to stop the "ground" rotting.
Nearly everything is made from reeds. It's not all traditional, though - they also have solar panels and electrical goods like TVs. I didn't see a Playstation but you never know. They're chasing the tourist dollar now, big time. Every island has the usual array of stuff, bracelets etc, for sale, and they tried to have us believe, on one island, that they only get visited 3 times in a month. We saw 2 other trips that day, and I don't think they only take visitors one day in the month...
Apart from that I chilled out in Puno. I was supposed to go to Bolivia today, but there's been a national strike there for 2 days. I'm told this is something I will get used to in Bolivia - things taking an unpredictable amount of time. So the best bet is not to make any cast-iron plans. It is what it is, and I don't have any meetings to make on Monday morning....
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