Hostal San Carlos Puno

Hello there,




And so the glorious dream is over. Twenty days spent with my Atacama crossing group, we crossed the Atacama and then it was over. As these things usually are. We bid a fond farewell at our hotel in La Paz and each set off alone. I say alone but we actually continued as a group in a small sense. The group now consisted of Colin, Andrea and myself. We all had a little time 'till our next tours so decided to spend it together ...

... lol) but we walked up to the top of the island to see the ruins of Patcha Mama and Tata. Freezing, no sun but no rain, loads of wind, we were lucky to find a small outdoor cafe at the top of one of the moutains where a man and his wife were serving coffee or tea and some homemade, just out of the frying oil, local doghnuts "Picarones" .

Woke up early 8am and we were off to Taquiles. Girls still not in fighting condition we got off the boat and ...

... in Puno we went ot our hostal en booked a trip to the Uros floating islands and the Taquile island. Afterwards we went to Inca bar to have our dinner. This was the most delicous food we ate in Peru. The dessert were baked bananas with a warm chocolate sauce and home made vanilla ice cream. After a day without eating, it was delicious.

Thuesday morning we left early with the bus to Lake Titicaca. This is the biggest and highest (3820 m above sea level) lake in the world that is ...

... are supposed to be fantastic.

A group of six of us took a guided tour of Monasterio de Santa Catalina, which was a stunning rabbit warren of buildings. The guide told us about the customs of the Monasterio – apparently during the 16th and 17th centuries wealthy Arequipeno families would marry off their first-born daughters (sometimes to 50-year-old men when the girls were in their teens!) but if you were the second daughter you really didn’t have much of a choice, you ...

... proved a struggle for everyone - there were a lot of compalints that we should have been warned beforehand because it was pretty tough for some of the group. Our Mama, Blanca showed us our remarkably nice room in the house with three beds and a couple of tables and given some time to settle while our Mama cooked us our lunch. The kitchen and dining room combined were as basic as you get with an old wood stove area and dirt floor , Blanca ...

We rose about 9am. We were in no hurry, we would spend the day in Puno and then take the tour to Lake Titicaka tomorrow. Our main priority this morning was finding somewhere nice to eat for breakfast, that was until we went down to reception.

Apparantley the receptionist last night had agreed a ridiculously low price for our stay and the new man at reception wasn't going to wear it. We were asked to leave. At first we were resistant and extremely ...

... to appear out of nowhere. Here, birds (flamingoes in particular) and vicunas and alpaca congregated. Unfortunately, for the rest of the ride, we sat in discomfort as the other passengers insisted that we keep the windows closed the entire ride. Every passenger wore heavy coats and were cold while Matjea and I were sweating in our short sleeves. I soon realized that Peruvians think fresh air ...

... Springy underfoot, soggy near the edge and very well designed for tourism which is really the only remaining industry here.
After an explanation of how the islands are built, we are invited to look around and are welcomed to poke our noses into the locals reed houses (just big enough for a bed and a solar powered cd player and flat screen tv). We are then encouraged to buy souvenirs from ...

... and a half, hardly enough time to get a bit more sleep, take a refreshing shower, and eat a light breakfast before being picked up at about 7. Our pick-up dropped us off at the pier, where they chose a boat for us to go in. We had to wait quite a bit for more people to show up...When we had a full boat, we left port and set sail on the world's highest navigable lake...

First stop was the Uros Islands, a set of man-made reed islands ...