No Pun for Pun-o?
Trip Start
Oct 15, 2007
1
38
97
Trip End
Aug 24, 2008
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Puno,
Peru
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
We decided to skip breakfast as Jacob couldn't face eating anyway and we needed to get to the station to catch our train. We got a taxi to the station and eventually found the platform. It wasn't where you would expect (i.e. beside the rails or through the main door to the station). No, it was hidden behind some minibuses at the back of the station building. Obvious really.
We queued up with all of the other people queuing up, eventually reached the front of the queue and were told that although everyone else was allowed to take luggage on the train, that was because they were travelling first class. There was no baggage allowed in cattle/backpacker class. We had to check our baggage in to the even more well hidden baggage check office. We rearranged things so that we had the stuff we needed in our small day packs and handed our large bags to a small man in orange, who was smaller than the bags and looked like Penfold.
Finally, we boarded the train, which, although sharing a name with the train we had taken to and from Aguas Calientes, was distinctly less comfortable. The seats were incredibly upright and the table was just the right height to stick into your thighs. And the journey was due to take 10 hours. And Jacob needed the loo again.
The staff brought round a menu, which we perused and decided to get a cup of tea (how terribly British) and some water, and ordered sandwiches for lunch as this apparently would be the only opportunity. The Japanese couple sitting opposite us decided to move to some spare seats down the train, so we sat either side of the table, which made sitting marginally more comfortable.
The journey passed without much note. Around midday, the train stopped for twenty minutes and we were able to get off and buy some bits and pieces at a rail-side market area. We got some crisps and empanadas (those little pasties) and another enormous bottle of water to try and rehydrate Jacob. Shortly afterwards, our sandwiches arrived. The ones that cost several times as much as the picnic we had just bought. Especially as the prices sneakily turned out to be in US$ rather than Soles ($1 = 3 Soles) as would be expected. Hmmm.
The rest of the journey was similarly uneventful, although very moving. No, not tears in your eyes, emotional kind of moving. More shaky shaky kind of moving. Whoever laid this track didn't have his straight edge with him.
Feeling somewhat shaken and not particularly stirred, we arrived in Puno just after dark. We waited behind a barrier whilst the staff took all the luggage off the train and lined it up in rows along the platform. Once they had done so, we were all allowed to go and collect our bags and we made our way out of the station. At the gates was a man holding a card with our names on (something Kirsty has always wanted to happen) who took us to our hostel.
Alfredo, the hostel owner, looks like Arthur Bostrom (Officer Crabtree from 'Allo 'Allo), has the zaniness and silly walk of John Cleese and possibly a few more Pythons (Eric Idle could play him in the film of his life) and could easily be imagined running a campsite full of pink tents. He showed us to our room and we settled in.
The hostel is run as a collection of small apartments. Our 'apartment' was three rooms off a small living area, which had sofas, a television and a table. We decided that as Jacob still felt ropey, we would go to the local supermarket and get something easy to cook and have an early night.
We found our way to the supermarket fairly easily and bought the ingredients of beans on toast, which although not the most extravagant or technically challenging of meals, was what Jacob thought might be what he fancied. On the way back to the hostel, Jacob was feeling worse than ever, so Kirsty sat him down on the bed, made him drink rehydration salts and lots of water, eat sweets (quick release energy) and bread (slow release energy) until he felt a little better. Once he felt slightly more human, we went to the kitchen where Kirsty cooked the feast that is beans on toast.
Kirsty thought it best not to mention the slightly dubious sanitary condition of the kitchen as it may make Jacob feel even worse. The following day though, she told him that we would be avoiding cooking in the kitchen again. Meal done, we headed to bed.
The following morning, Jacob felt a lot better (maybe there was some penicillin growing in the kitchen?). We had breakfast in the apartment with Lois, the occupant of the next door room. Breakfast consisted of bread, jam and coffee. The thing with coffee in hostels and the like in Peru is that it is generally served as a small jug of cold coffee concentrate and a large jug or flask of hot water. Unfortunately, the concentrate is usually about the right strength for drinking, which means that once it is diluted and hot, it doesn't tend to taste of a right lot.
After breakfast, we headed out to go and see a ship called the Yavari. Those of you who saw Michael Palin's Full Circle may remember seeing him visit this ship. She was built in 1862 by the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company in London as a gun boat. The order specified that she was to be constructed in parts, like a giant Meccano project, with no part being bigger than could be carried by a mule. The reason for this was that she was commissioned to be one of the gun boats on Lake Titicaca, which you may remember from geography lessons as being the world's highest navigable lake. Lake though, so no direct access to the sea. Once she had been made, she was shipped to Arica, which at the time was at the southern end of the Peruvian coast (it is now Chilean), then carried by train to Tacna, where the 2766 pieces and two crankshafts were loaded onto mules and carried across the Andes to Lake Titicaca. Six years later, she was put back together and eventually launched on Christmas Day 1870.
We spent a while looking around the ship, which is one of the oldest ships still afloat, and certainly the oldest single-prop iron vessel still in working condition. She is being gradually restored and is eventually intended to sail the waters of Lake Titicaca again as a 'Victorian style cruiser' for tourists. Not an ideal way for such a dignified old lady to spend her latter years, but better than crumbling and sinking, which was the future that had been in store for her.
After visiting the ship, we wandered back through the hotel whose premises the boat is moored on. In the grounds were a few alpaca, so we paused to feed and admire them. They are very silly looking creatures; a little like llamas but more woolly. Like llama teddy bears.
We wandered back towards town, eventually hailing a colectivo as we had misjudged quite how far the walk was. When we got back in to town, we decided we'd have a lazy afternoon. We sat for a while in the main square watching the world go by and refusing the constant offers from small children to shine our shoes, which were definitely are definitely not the sort that would benefit from a shiny appearance. Giving up on a peaceful time in the square, we instead went and did some internet stuff before heading back to the hostel.
After showers, we were making plans for where to go in Chile but got chatting instead to our new neighbours. Lois had moved to the single room of the apartment and the double was now occupied by a Canadian couple, Heidi and Mike, who we nattered to for a while.
Later that evening, we decided to go out for food and headed back in to town. Jacob had seen a lamb dish which was apparently a speciality of the region at the hotel with the alpaca and the Yavari, which had taken his fancy. We found another place doing the same sort of dish in the town centre so we decided to give them a try. Jacob had the lamb (braised with herbs, garlic and assorted other bits and pieces) with 'chuno' potatoes and Kirsty had the kingfish in cherry sauce with gratin potatoes. The 'cherry sauce' turned out to be less like the rich, thick, black cherry sauce that we had imagined and more like... well, yoghurt. Think Müller Lite. However, the worst thing on either of our plates was Jacob's chuno potatoes. These are another speciality of the region. Traditionally, folks living in the cold, rarefied mountainous regions of South America would preserve potatoes by freeze drying them and rehydrating them at a later date. The taste for this atrocious filth has unfortunately not died along with the necessity of its production. As a gastronomic experience it sits somewhere between bad fish and bad cheese - no mean feat for a vegetable. Stiff, chewy, crunchy, gritty, tough, crumbly, waxy...all at once. A sort of horribly aromatic yet unpleasantly bland flavour, redolent of overcooked haddock strained through an unwashed sock.
Having had a strangely puddingy main course, Kirsty decided against dessert, but Jacob couldn't resist ordering the Chocolate Funge Cake. No, that's not a typo. It turned out to be a fairly dull, dry chocolate fudge cake. All in all, not the most impressive meal.
Having done little else with the evening, we decided the following day to try and visit the floating islands. These are an interesting feature of Lake Titicaca. The Uros tribal people, fleeing persecution from the more aggressive Inca and Colla tribes, reached Lake Titicaca and found that the area was already settled with larger, stronger tribes. Undeterred, they decided therefore to inhabit the lake itself. Initially, they hid amongst the reeds, but gradually, they started weaving the reeds together to make islands. The islands are attached to the bed of the lake with an anchor of hardwood, which can be pulled up, allowing the island to float to another location if necessary. There is now a community of islands which are variable in size, but the majority are large enough for a few houses. The houses are also woven out of reeds. There are elaborate woven boats for travelling between the islands and to shore to trade with the other tribes. One of the islands we visited had obviously just been 'recarpeted' with a fresh layer of reeds. The surface of the islands is strangely bouncy and occasionally alarmingly boggy, but overall, the experience was fascinating.
We headed back to shore and were treated to other people's children running around the boat into us and anything else that they possibly could bang into, blowing monotonally and monotonously into ocarinas that their parents, in their wisdom, had bought for them as souvenirs. Great.
We went to the bus station to see about arranging buses for our onward journey to Chile. Bus stations in Peru are a daunting affair: the station is full of stalls for companies who offer bus services to various parts of Peru. Each stall owner yells destinations at you ("Limalimalima!" "Araquiparaquiparaquipa!" etc) but having found one who was going to Tacna, we were told that we couldn't buy tickets for the day after tomorrow today. We would have to wait until tomorrow. Clearly.
That evening was New Year's Eve and the hostel had arranged a party for all the inhabitants. Gilda (Alfredo's wife) would be cooking a meal for everyone and the guests would all be bringing some alcohol. We were assigned wine and Alfredo took us out to a local store, where we bought four bottles of red wine for 40 Soles. For those of you who haven't kept up with the exchange rate, that's less than £7. Not bad, eh?
We had showers and prepared for the festivities. The meal was lovely and we had a really good evening, chatting with Lois, Heidi and Mike who were sharing our apartment and with Carrie and Zak, a couple from Texas, who were also staying at the hostel. After food, we went up to the roof (a lot of Peruvian buildings come complete with flat roof) and let off the fireworks that the Texan couple had bought (about a bin bag full: the dual Texan philosophies of 'they're cheap so get lots' and 'we're American, we need to blow shit up' were apparent). Around midnight, the whole town exploded in a mass of fireworks. Neither of us had ever seen quite so many fireworks going off at once before. We had a 360 degree view of the town and it was lit up in pretty colours and ringing with bangs, pops and whistles. Kirsty, foolishly, ended up in the path of a stray spark and obtained herself the first injury of 2008: a slight split lip and burn. Alfredo immediately rushed off and returned with cream. No, sorry, we have no clue as to what this cream might have been or how it was supposed to help, but it didn't seem to do any harm.
The party then moved to the ground floor, which was convenient, as we all soon decided that it was time for bed, and we only had to walk a few metres before we were there. Happy 2008!
The following morning, we all emerged for breakfast a little later than on previous days. We decided that we would go back to the bus station to get bus tickets for the following day to travel to Tacna, where we would be crossing the border into Chile. Lois also needed to go, so we shared a taxi. Being New Year's Day, taxis were in surprisingly short supply, but the owner of a bicycle taxi (a sort of backwards tricycle with a wheel at the back and a bench seat mounted above the two front wheels) was adamant that he could take all three of us to the bus station. Kirsty ended up hanging off the side. It would have been quicker to walk. At times, we felt a little embarrassed as elderly people with sticks were making more progress than we were. Eventually, though, we arrived at the bus station.
Unfortunately, the company who had yesterday told us that we would have to come back today to get a ticket for tomorrow (following?) were closed. We scouted around the stalls again, being offered buses to all sorts of exciting places, but decided that we would wait until later in the day to see if the place we had got a good quote from earlier was going to be open later.
That afternoon, we went on a tour to Sillustani, which is the location of the chullpas or 'funeral chimneys'. These are the large pre-Incan tombs of the Colla people on the shores of Lake Umayo, a little way out of Puno. They are either cylindrical or take the form of inverted, truncated cones, but the tombs within them are conical, with tiny little crawlways facing the rising sun. The sun was believed to be reborn every day, and these large structures, symbolically representing the uterus, housing the corpses buried in the foetal position, were thus locations of spiritual rebirth as well as physical death. They are not the only example of such towers, but they are certainly the best preserved: tombs of cultures who inter their dead with precious offerings have a tendency towards being robbed.
On the way back to Puno, we made the worst value transaction either of us have ever made, or, indeed, ever heard of: we bought an old Sol de Oro coin for the princely sum of one Nuevo Sol. Those of you who have been keeping up with our previous entries may remember that the Sol de Oro was replaced, at the rate of 1,000 to 1, by the Inti. When inflation spiralled out of control leaving the Inti worthless, it was replaced by the Nuevo Sol, at the rate of 1,000,000 to 1. So, aside from the fact that the Sol de Oro is officially worthless and cannot be exchanged for legal tender at a bank, we paid 1,000,000,000 times its face value. Bargain. It has a picture of a llama on it, and only actually cost us about sixteen pence.
Once we got back to Puno, we went to the bus station and finally sorted out getting ourselves tickets for Tacna for the following evening.
We decided that we would go out for guinea pig, a traditional Peruvian dish and one we had not yet sampled. Well, Jacob decided he would have guinea pig, Kirsty was less struck by the idea of voluntarily eating rodents. After nosing around at a few restaurants, we decided upon one which, as it turned out, had been one of Alfredo's recommendations. They, despite their menu, were fresh out of guinea pig. A woman who had been waving menus at us in the street (touting for business is a way of life in Peru, especially in the hospitality trade) and whose restaurant we had declined, explaining that we wanted guinea pig and her menu didn't list it, collared us and told us she had tracked down a guinea pig and that her shef would cook it. Couldn't really refuse that, now could we?
We didn't particularly like the fact that as we waited, sipping our drinks, she came back into the restaurant and scurried into the kitchen with something under her coat...
Guinea pig is not a dish one can eat with grace or elegance. The meat's not half bad, actually, when one gets over the sight of a spatchcocked household pet, head still attached, staring up from the plate in grilled horror. The problem is, there aren't many areas of a guinea pig which can realistically be attacked with any great effect with cutlery. Gnawing is the order of the day. Kirsty did begin to wonder just who the hell she had married, as her husband paused in the act of chewing the face off a dead rodent's skull, to debate whether the ears would be worth eating. They weren't.
The following day was mostly filled with waiting for the evening's bus departure. We visited the LAN airline office and changed the length of our stay on Easter Island. We had originally booked a few days, but the more we read about it, the longer we knew we would want to stay. That done, we went back to the restaurant who hadn't been able to serve us guinea pig, as it had looked rather nice, and had quite a reasonable, but rather more orthodox, feed.
We checked our e-mail in the hostel, receiving a survey form from the site through which we had booked our stay in Puno, so filled it in favourably there and then, whereupon our score of 98% immediately flashed up on Alfredo's screen. Grateful for the good press, he disappeared to his room and returned with a bottle of scotch, left over from the New Year's festivities. A nice end to the stay.
The evening arrived, and then so did our taxi to the bus station. Hugs and handshakes were exchanged as we left the hostel: it felt a great deal more like we had been staying with an eccentric uncle and aunt than paying for a room.
