I hate night buses

Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you that if sleeping was an Olympic sport, I would get gold every time. I slept through an earthquake in La Paz for heavens sake. I could probably fall asleep now as I sit at a small Ikea style table overlooking the pool just outside of Huacachina. Anyway, I think you get the idea that if you look up “Katy Boyce” in the dictionary, it would say “main occupation: sleeping”. Night buses in Peru however have proved to be somewhat of my Achilles’ Heel. Perhaps this is revenge for me claiming that I can sleep anywhere, ‘ha ha!’ thought the bus, ‘I’ll soon show you!’. The seats are not made for ample Western bottoms and if you’re anything over about 5’6 then good luck! Also they seem to insist on making the leg rests out of this awful plastic which isn’t ideal when you’re travelling in heat, as you find yourself having to repeatedly unpeel your sweaty legs – YUM!

We were picked up in a timely fashion from our hostel in Puno and headed out to the suburbs to meet the larger bus which was to take us to Arequipa. In true South American fashion nobody was telling anybody what was going on and so all the people going to Arequipa and all the people going to Cusco found themselves in front of just one bus, but planning to go in completely separate directions. As it transpires, when we got onto the bus it was then that the guide decided to inform us that the bus would go about 4 hours towards Cusco (away from the road to Arequipa), and then those travelling to Arequipa would change buses and go all the way back down. Fantastic. So now not only would we be able to get no sleep but we would also get to be interrupted half way through our journey! It turns out that reason for this is that those travelling to Arequipa meet the bus that has departed from Cusco and so it means they only have to run 2 buses rather than 3. I’ve had only good things to say about Peru Hop up until now but honestly for the price we paid, it hasn’t been half as good as it has claimed to be. The seats recline just not quite enough for you to get comfortable (not like our lovely El Dorado bus in Bolivia ❤ ) and there aren’t always USB chargers on every bus like they claim. It’s nice to have an English speaking guide on board but I think knowing what we know now, we wouldn’t use them again.

Arriving in Arequipa our lovely AirBnb host Rosa-Luz had advised us that checking in at 5am wouldn’t be a problem, for which we will be eternally grateful. Once again however, Peru Hop had other plans. We stepped off the bus, groggy and grumpy and ready for a nice long kip, and were promptly shown to our minibus and taken to our AirBnB. Just kidding, we were made to wait 45 minutes in the dark with no apology and no one telling us what was going on. One of the guides did seem to be getting arsey with someone on the phone but at no point did she stop to communicate with us just what was going on. When a minivan did eventually turn up, the driver and his companion spent a good further 10 minutes chatting away outside the van while we got more and more frustrated. This wasn’t helped by the woman next to me saying “this is just how it is in South America, just calm down”. I’m not sure that ever in the history of someone telling someone to calm down has it ever actually resulted in that person calming down, in fact it often, as in this case, has the opposite effect. The rage was palpable but as I am a calm natured person and rarely lose my temper (*cough*) I chose not to punch her in the face and we were soon underway. We dropped off a few of our fellow travellers and then the driver decided to stop at a random doorway, get out of the van and proceed to have a further 10 minute discussion. Anyway, we finally arrived at the AirBnB at around 6:30am, a good 1h30 minutes after we had arrived in Arequipa. Not great. I fired off an e-mail to PeruHop to complain and to their credit I did receive a response from one of the owners but it was very cut and paste, oh well, enough complaining, time to enjoy Arequipa!

As is tradition post-nightbus, Dave went for a well needed nap and I stayed up and tried to get the TV to work. Our AirBnB was located to the North of the city just outside of the main tourist area next to a beautiful green park and with cracking views of two of the city’s Volcanoes: Misti and Chachani. Luckily both are closely monitored in case of eruptions so we felt very safe. Following Dave’s awakening we popped down to the town centre for a mooch around and discovered the beautiful Plaza de Armas, with towering palm trees and the white volcanic buildings, it firmly shoved Sucre out of the way, claiming the top spot for most beautiful city (sorry Sucre, still love you for dinosaurs though.) Groceries acquired and still feeling a little worse for wear we headed back to the flat, settled down with a mountain of nachos and spent the rest of the evening exploring exactly what there was to do in the city.

The answer is, not that much really. The main pull of Arequipa is the nearby Colca Canyon, the second deepest Canyon in the world and one of the best viewing points for spotting the endangered Andean Condors in the wild. We did however manage to find a free walking tour and so normal service resumed. We popped along to the Las Gringas restaurant meeting point and were greeted by our delightful guide whose name has unfortunately escaped us (Dave thinks it was Juan, I said that was racist). He was certainly one of the best guides we’ve had in our time in South America, with exceptional English and a flamboyant style, he took us round the city and explained the history of Arequipa. With almost year round late spring/early summer temperatures, it attracts a lot of Europeans and there seemed to be French people everywhere. The upside of this is that we consumed a lot of tasty crepes during our time there. We also found out that evidence supporting the Big Bang Theory (the space one, not the awful TV show) was uncovered in the Boyden Observatory just outside of the city, so that’s pretty darn cool! We finished our walking tour at a rooftop bar just before sunset and spent a bit of time taking it all in before heading back to Las Gringas for a pizza and a beer. Or at least we would have ordered a beer if it was possible to have anything but craft beer in Arequipa. As an aside, they do have various different ciders which are brewed locally so that was a nice treat, but to be perfectly honest, sometimes you just want a beer. A normal pilsner with no frills and no inflated price tag. Sorry it seems this is turning into the agony aunt blog post, I’m not ungrateful I promise, I fully appreciate just how wonderful an opportunity it is that we have to be travelling like this…….but……beer!

Aside from a beautiful main square and excellent walking tours, another of Arequipa’s main tourist attractions is the fabulous Mundo Alpaca or Alpaca World! I think the use of the word World here is probably slightly hyperbolic as it’s more of a shed with a small field filled with llamas and alpacas. The guide gave us a quick tour in v-e-r-y s-l-o-w and v-e-r-y c-l-e-a-r Spanish and we had a chance to feed the llamas and get up close and personal with the machinery used to process the wool, which was really interesting. We could have taken the opportunity to see yet more traditional weaving patterns but if I never see another one of those, it will be too soon. After visiting Alpaca “World” we one again trotted off into town to see another one of Arequipa’s claims to fame: Juanita. Juanita is a perfectly preserved ice mummy, killed between 1450 and 1480, when she was between 12-15 years old, as a human sacrifice to the Ampato volcano god by the Incas. Her skin, teeth, hair, organs and blood are remarkably well preserved. Sadly for preservation reasons, we didn’t get to see Juanita in the flesh (sorry) but we did get to see another equally impressive mummy – Sarita. She’s not quite as well preserved as Juanita but it was still really interesting. Our tour guide spoke very good English and explained all about the different artefacts that were found surrounding her before we finally stepped into a freezing cold room to see Sarita herself. I think I probably could have stayed there all day staring into those empty sockets but we were soon ushered out by the guide. It’s definitely worth a trip if you’re in Arequipa, especially if you’re there during the high season when you get to see Juanita herself, and there’s a short film at the start all about the discovery and the conditions surrounding it.

Feeling suitably peckish after our visit to Sarita, we headed off back to the AirBnB to do a bit more research about Colca Canyon tours. We booked with the Peru Hop recommended company, hoping that their tour group recommendations would be better than their ability to organise minivans and luckily for us we were correct. Paying around £40 for a 2D1N tour, we were picked up just down the road at around 7:30 and began our long drive through the Arequipan landscape, stopping at various points along the way to be sold tourist rubbish but also to see some more volcanoes. The landscape around Arequipa is almost prehistoric, the volcanic nature of the terrain provides for some excellent photo opportunities. Our group consisted of ourselves, a handful of Israelis, a Spanish couple, an older Swedish couple and a young family from New Zealand travelling with their 10 year old daughter. We got quite friendly with Rachel, Stu and Isabelle during those two days and were grateful for their company. Stu set up a pest control business that it turns out sold its products in the garden centre Dave used to work at – small world eh! Continuing on our journey, our guide Flor pointed out the mountain where Juanita was found and also the volcano just next to it which erupts on average around 24 times a day. The air was noticeably hazier and it was clear just how much the ash lingers and why when that volcano erupted in Iceland it proved to be such a big problem. We reached a high point of 4910m that day, not quite the highest we’ve been but close enough that we were starting to feel a little wobbly from the altitude. We quickly headed back down to the town of Chivay at around 3500m and headed to our third hot springs of the trip where we got chatting once again to Rachel and Stu about life, the universe, and everything. They were going to spend ~2 years travelling all around the world before probably heading back to New Zealand. Apparently 10 is the perfect age to do it because children still like their parents at this age, are old enough to appreciate it all, and haven’t turned into horrible teenagers yet, so that gave us some food for thought with regards to future plans.

After the hot springs our guide told us that during dinner we’d be treated to some more examples of local traditional dances and songs. ‘Oh goody’ we thought. It’s not that we’re heathens and can’t appreciate the subtleties of tradition and local culture but dear reader please understand that at this point this was about the 15^th time we’d been ‘treated’ to these dances, and often they’re by bored looking teenagers who have obviously been bribed into it by the prospect of tips from the gringos. However, I have to say that on this occasion we were pleasantly mistaken. The couple performing the dances seemed to be genuinely enjoying themselves, or at least doing a very good job of faking it. The food was also really nice, especially as it was evident that this place exists solely for tourists. I even got to hit Stu with a bit of rope so I can’t complain. Isabelle was adamant that we get involved at every single opportunity but unfortunately as we are boring grown ups and would rather have a conversation she was often left to her own devices, twirling around the dance floor and generally having a jolly good time. After this we headed to our hotel which, given that we’d only paid £20 each for the whole thing, was better than expected. There was the usual 1 pillow, twin beds, no TV remote situation and Dave did manage to leave his fantastic flamingo swimming trunks behind (add that to the list of ‘things Dave has left in South America’) but it was clean and warm which is all you want really.

Up bright and early the next morning for our 5am departure, we were finally off to see the thing we’d come all this way to see: the condors. There’s a particular point along the Colca Canyon called the Condor Cross which is the best place to see them as they sit lower down in the Canyon waiting for the thermal currents to be warm enough to lift their huge 3m wingspan 15kg bodies up into the air. Before arriving to the cross, we took a short hike to a point slightly lower down to appreciate the full depth of the canyon, we also saw some dead cows which I thought was exceptionally cool but which Isabelle thought was gross. and was much more interested in asking us what our favourite brand of sock was, or what our favourite mythical creature was, or what our favourite colour was, or if we were a dog what breed of dog we would be, (Marks and Spencer, Dragon, Green, German Shepherd, in case you were wondering) before promptly dismissing our response and telling us what hers was. Kids are great. We then finally headed up to the Condor Cross where we only had to wait a short while before the flight of the concords (not the band) began. We saw about 10/12 in total which is really good luck as some people come all that way and don’t see any of them. In fact several groups arrived about an hour after we did and didn’t see a single one. It’s really very impressive to watch these huge great birds fly around and we were completely mesmerised as they flew incredibly close straight over our heads. They didn’t seemed to be fazed by the tourists at all and it’s clear why they attract so many visitors. After about an hour we made our way slowly back to the bus, but not before stopping to introduce Rachel and Isabelle to the wonders of the Granadilla, and managing to convince Isabelle that the seeds inside are in fact frogspawn and that we were eating baby frogs. I’m now starting to understanding why my older siblings and parents (ok, my Dad) spent all that time winding me up when I was younger, it really is quite fun. And so began our long drive back to Arequipa, we stopped in various places to take more pictures and look at more of the same jumpers/scarves/condor keyrings/penis masks that you see everywhere else in Peru but after the Condors, nothing really came close.

Arriving back in Arequipa we said our farewells to our Kiwi friends. We were going to be getting the same bus to Huacachina in a few days time so it wasn’t goodbye forever and Dave and I were particularly looking forward to more opportunities to answer Isabelle’s relentless questions. Our final day in Arequipa was fairly uneventful, apart from some particularly good pasta and a cracking pizza, there isn’t much that stands out as being particularly memorable. There was also a cat that looked remarkably like my brother’s cat Spock so I called him Spocky Dos (Spocky Two) and also a lovely ginger cat. Yes ladies and gentlemen I did come all the way to South America just to talk about the cats I’ve seen. You should think yourself lucky, I think Dave’s going to strangle me if I stop to pet another dog in the street. Anyway, on to Huacachina…

An Englishman, a Kiwi and a Bolivian go out in to the desert.

Apologies for the delay in this blogs publishing, we’ve been staying in a series of places with very unreliable internet connections.

If there’s one thing that we’ve learned during our time in South America, it’s to never take the UK’s small geography for granted. This is a lesson that was going to be hammered home very hard over the coming week.

Our bus to Uyuni from Sucre, winding westwards through the Andes to the vast Plain which hosts to the Bolivian Salt Flats took just over 8 hours. After the steep slopes on which most of the towns we’ve visited in South America sit, the pancake-flat Uyuni was something of a welcome change. That’s pretty much Uyuni’s only redeeming feature though, it’s a small, dirty and dusty block-layout town known, even amongst the locals, as something of a ****hole. The town used to be a hub for exporting the regions rich mineral deposits but now serves primarily as a jumping off point for tourists visiting the salt flats. The strong winds that blow off the salt flats through the city strew rubbish everywhere and cover every surface in a thin layer of grey-brown, salty dust.

After spending half an hour waiting for the receptionist to show up we finally checked in to our hotel for the night, a somewhat underwhelming twin room (we’d asked for a double, but this is South America; sometimes you just have to settled for a rough approximation of what you asked for (further note on this; this can go either way. At time of writing we’re sitting in a suite room where we’d only booked a double. Six of one…)) which looked like it was last renovated in the late 80’s. It was the best we could get for a reasonable price and for just 1 night it served its purpose. Due to Uyuni’s remote location and the high salt content in the soil, there is no agriculture or fresh-water supply and consequently the cost of living is very high; a cost reflected in the price of hotels, restaurants and other amenities.

The following morning, we headed over to the offices of Quechua4WD, our tour operator for our 3-day salt flats tour. Here we met our guide Nando, our Driver Daniel and Saatchi, a Kiwi of Sri Lankan heritage who now lives in Canada and spent much of the first day of our trip seeking my approval for the numerous (he claims) sexual conquests he’d made during his time in South America, and largely ignoring Katy.

We departed Uyuni about 10am, stopping first at the ‘train cemetery’ 3 miles to the south of the town. Back in the late 19^th and early 20^th Century, Uyuni was a major rail depot en-route to the Pacific, but with the collapse of the Bolivian mining industry in the early 1940’s the line fell in to disuse. The majority of the engines and rolling stock were dumped in sidings on the outskirts of Uyuni where they quickly fell in to disrepair, and were scavenged for any easily removed valuable parts. Today, the nearly 100 trains slowly rusting in to the desert landscape with the salt-filled winds whistling through them are covered in gravity and an unrelenting swarm of tourists. There’s a plan to turn this place in to a museum; the sooner the better.

After half an hour of wandering around the train cemetery, we jumped back in our 4×4 and set off towards the small village of Colchani, one of several towns on the shore of the Salt Lake where the locals are permitted to mine and refine the salt. As well as packing salt for wholesale and retail, the locals use densely-packed blocks of salt from deep within the salt flats to construct buildings and make ornaments and statuettes to sell to passing tourists. After a quick tour around one of the many family-run salt refineries we headed out on to the salt flats.

The Bolivian salt flats (Known as the Uyuni Salar) are the largest in the world, covering an area of over 4,000 square miles, or about half the size of Wales. The elevation change across the entire Salar is less than 1 meter, meaning that satellites use the large, flat reflective surface for calibrating their altitude sensors. During the rainy season the Salar is covered in a thin layer of water, turning it in to the world’s largest natural mirror, whilst in the dry season, the water evaporates leaving just the crystallised salt deposits. In the centre, the Salar is about 50cm more elevated than at the edges, meaning that as the wet season ends, the centre is dry but the edges are still submerged in a few centimetres of water. This makes March the optimal month to visit the Salar as you get to see the Salar in both states. Lucky Us!

We drove out about 3 miles on to the Salar, stopping at a small outpost made of salt bricks, inside of which is an expensive hotel and restaurant. The outpost also serves as a staging post for the Bolivian Leg of the Dakar Rally, which has been coming through the Salar since 2014. Whilst we had a mooch about attempting to identify all the flags on small outcrop by the outpost, Daniel prepared lunch for us. Refreshed, we set off again deeper in to the heart of the Salar. Once we found a spot without any other tour groups too nearby, we stopped to take advantage of the Salar’s unique landscape for ‘perspective’ pictures. Nando showed off his creativity with the perspective shots, having us climb wine bottles, ride llamas, walk along our own shoelaces like tight-ropes and hold miniature versions of each other.

After an hour we continued further until we found the edge of the area still covered by water. According to Nando, at this time of year the water recedes at a rate of several hundred meters a day. The plan was to stay out on the Salar until sunset taking photos with the reflection, but sadly the high winds negated the mirror effect. To kill the time, we popped on some wellies and set off in the direction of some Flamingos we could see in the distance, deciding after half an hour that that was probably a pretty dumb idea and making our way back. As the Sun began to set the wind dropped off and we were treated to an utterly awe-inspiring scene with the mountains in the background, the red and pink clouds and the setting sun reflected off the now perfectly tranquil water.

In the twilight we headed back to Uyuni, stopping off at a small local restaurant for a meal where Saatchi informed us of his genius plan to control the human population by banning vaccines. That night our accommodation was a charmingly decrepit hostel with a surprisingly comfortable bed. It would have been a perfectly good night’s sleep were it not for the loud Americans banging on the door to the hostel at 2:30am. Owing to political disagreements between Bolivia and the US, Americans have to pay about $160 to get a Bolivian Visa. Evidently this is not enough.

Groggy, sleep deprived and cursing the USA we staggered down for breakfast with an irritatingly refreshed Saatchi who hadn’t been bothered by the commotion in the night. Nando turned up soon after to pick us up and we jumped back in to the 4×4, this timed joined by a Japanese couple who were travelling with us to the Chilean border. I’d tell you what their names were, but I can’t remember. They spoke little English and no Spanish (Goodness knows how they’d made it so far through South America) and spent much of the day asleep in the back of the 4×4.

Our adventure for the day took us south from Uyuni on a long trek through the epic Bolivian Altiplano towards Eduardo Avaroa National Park which occupies the southwestern corner of the country by the Chilean and Argentinean borders. The journey took us first along paved roads for a couple of hundred kilometres before heading off-road in to the desert. For hours upon hours we meandered through valleys and ravines, past lakes and mountains, stopping every few hours or so to take stock of the breath-taking landscape. With each valley we went through the geology and wildlife changed dramatically. One moment we’d be in sandy desert, the next surrounded by Quinoa fields or massive, chaotic rock formations shaped by volcanic activity and sandstorms. We passed several lagoons filled with Flamingos, including the aptly named ‘red lagoon’, given a deep crimson colour by the high concentration of Algae fed by the hot springs pouring in to the lagoon from the surrounding mountains. This is a really beautiful part of the world, and its remoteness means it is largely untouched.

Towards the end of the day we climbed to nearly 5000m (but not quite over 5000m, which is good because our travel insurance isn’t valid above 5K), the weather closed in and it started to snow. We made our way through the mist and snow to the Sol De Manana fumerals; boiling pools of grey volcanic mud that give off a constant stream of thick, sulphurous gas. The snow, mist and high winds combined with the fumerals created an utterly other-worldly locale, truly like nothing else on earth.

Our final stop for the night was a small, remote village on the shore of large lagoon where we would be staying the night. Our accommodation was a simple shared dorm with the mattresses propped up on breeze-block bases. Comfortable enough, but at 4400m, the prolonged effects of high altitude made for a difficult night’s sleep. Before bed though, there was time to head down to the hot spring by the edge of the lagoon. Our remote location, complete lack of light pollution and high altitude meant that the sky was more densely packed with stars that any night sky we’d ever seen. The ark of the Milky way stretched over the lagoon in front of us all the way to the horizon and for over an hour Katy and I just lay there in the hot spring, gazing up at the stars, more relaxed than we could remember being in a long time.

The final day of our tour started with a trip south to the Chilean border to drop off our Japanese friends. The car park for the Bolivian immigration office is on the Chilean side of the border meaning that, technically, we entered Chile. Yay! The border between Chile and Bolivia marks the frontier between South America’s richest and poorest nations, despite this the border is marked only by a small ditch that is easily stepped over. Nando couldn’t help but make sly observations regarding border walls. Our business concluded we set off back north, following a similar pattern as the day before, stopping off at natural beauty spots as we worked our way back up to Uyuni. The final stop we made was at Laguna Negra on the edge of an ancient lava field. The lagoon is surrounded by tall, jagged orange rocks jutting out at all angles from lush green grasslands, grazed upon by flocks of Llamas. Nando said this was his favourite stop on the whole trek, and it was very easy to see why.

After a long day in a 4×4 we arrived back at Uyuni and, having been without internet for 3 days, desperately caught up on the Grand Prix results. As if we hadn’t spent enough time in vehicles already, we now had a 10-hour night bus to La Paz ahead of us. Goody. As is tradition, I didn’t sleep a wink, meaning that by the time we got to our hostel in La Paz I’d been up for about 26 hours. We didn’t do much with our time in La Paz, I mainly slept, and Katy wrote the previous Blog post. We ate at the hotel restaurant and got an early night’s sleep as we had to be up at 5:30 the following morning to catch our bus back to Copacabana.

Up early but well rested, we departed La Paz for the final time, arriving in Copacabana about 11am. We checked in to La Cupula again, where we’d pushed the boat out a bit and treated ourselves to one of their suites complete with Jacuzzi, Chimenea and view over the beach. Despite the luxury, it was still a good deal cheaper than a night at a Premier Inn. The next day we took the boat out to Isla Del Sol, the only real Activity in Copacabana which we were unable to partake in on our previous pass through the town due to illness. Isla Del Sol is the birthplace of the sun in Inca folklore, and today is home to about 3000 people across 3 communities. Disputes between the communities over income from tourism spilled out into violence a few months ago, resulting in most of the island now being inaccessible to tourists and ruining it for everybody.

The boat ride out was about an hour and a half in to the wind and over choppy waters. Once at the Island we went for a short walk up past some ruins, north-west across the island before heading back down to another port in the village of Yumani. With most of the island closed off there wasn’t a great deal to see, but it was a pleasant enough walk.

We got back to Copacabana about 5pm just in time to catch our bus across the Peruvian border to Puno, arriving at about 8pm. It was sad to wave farewell to Bolivia, a country we’d both enjoyed greatly, and more so than we thought we would. Whilst on the bus we booked ourselves on to a tour of the floating Islands near Puno for the following day, which meant another early start for a 6:45 pick up. The minibus picked us up at the surprisingly prompt 6:50 to head down to the port where we boarded a riverboat with about 40 other sleep deprived tourists. To wake us up we were serenaded by the delightful combination of out of tune guitar and off-beat panpipes covering a medley of western pop songs. The offending musician then rounded the boat for tips (What’s Spanish for ‘guitar tuner’?) before being replaced by Alex, our guide for the day.

The floating islands are home to the Uros people, an offshoot of the Aymara who live on a network of floating islands made of reeds which have to be constantly replenished to prevent them rotting away. In total, there are about 5000 people living in communities across Lake Titicaca on both the Bolivian and Peruvian sides, but by far the largest of their communities is the one near Puno, located in the centre of a large series of reed-beds and frequented daily by fleets of tourist boats.

In this community there are around 90 islands straddling a wide natural channel through the reed beds. Our first stop was at a small island in the channel approaching the village, here the village leader assigned us to a particular island to visit. This way the tourists are distributed evenly around the islands, allowing each island (typically home to 2-5 families) to share equally in the revenue from tourism, as well as controlling the footfall on each island which can accelerate the rate at which they wear down. We were assigned to ‘Condor Island’ about two thirds of the way up the western row of side of the channel. The islands inhabitants helped bring our boat in and we jumped down on to their home. The Islands are about 3 meters thick and 2/3rds submerged, they have the feel of a firm mattress, giving way slightly under foot and gently swaying with the movements of the lake. Our group was gathered around in a semi-circle and one of the Islands inhabitants who gave us a short demonstration of how the islands are built and how the locals go about their lives, complete with dolls and toy boats.

Our little show-and-tell complete we were invited to look inside the homes of the locals, take pictures from the islands watch-tower and, of course, to buy tourist toot. As we departed, we were given the option of riding on one of the large catamarans fashioned of reeds that they locals refer to as ‘Mercedes Benz’s’. Large and unwieldy, they exist purely for the amusement of the tourists. We couldn’t resist though and climbed aboard on to the upper deck for a ride across to the large capital island on the side of the channel, but not before the local’s sang us some farewell songs, including a rendition of ‘row row row your boat’.

On the capital island we had the opportunity to get our passport stamped with a ‘Lake Titicaca Islands’ stamp (bad idea) and buy more tourist toot. The floating islands are genuinely interesting and seeing the unusual way of life of these people is fascinating, but as with so many rural communities in the developing world the population is dwindling fast as the young depart for better opportunities in the cities. What’s left of the population is now totally dependent on tourism and the Islands have a gimmicky, almost theme park like vibe to them. It’s lamentable that the islands have lost their authenticity but were it not for the transition to capitalising on tourism, this is a way of life that may well have disappeared entirely by now… Half a dozen of the other.

After the floating Islands we set off for the island of Taquile, about an hour and a half’s boat ride away just outside of Puno bay. The experience here was much like the Isla Del sol the day before, without the disputes dividing the island. After an hour of walking along the north of the island we arrived at a rustic, rather charming little town square, much of which was unchanged from the colonial era. After regrouping we headed down to a small restaurant in the garden of a local family home for a very tasty meal of Quinoa soup and trout fresh from the lake (The trout is an invasive species here, so it’s guilt-free meat!). There was, of course, the usual demonstration of local textile production and traditional dances to accompany our meals and Alex gave us an explanation of the unique dress customs of the Islands communities with a suspicious focus on identifying who was unmarried. Like the floating islands, Taquile’s population is also in decline. Perhaps they hope to get more than just money from the tourists…

We headed down to the harbour and boarded the boat back to Puno, this time opting to sit up on deck with a Dutch woman called Ava and an Ausi called Paul who we’d struck up friendships with over lunch. We got back to Puno about 4pm and headed back to our Hostel to ready ourselves for yet another night bus, this time to Arequipa, Peru’s second largest city. But that’s a story for next time.