Funo in Puno
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Puno, Sacred Valley, Peru
Alison: As we enjoyed the Peru Hop experience so much, we decided to continue our journey with this company and book the Bolivia Hop which takes you from Cusco (Peru) to La Paz (Bolivia) in 24hours with assistance crossing the border and a couple of stops along the way. The bus departed Cusco late in the evening so before we got to do any fun stuff, we had to get the uncomfortable overnight journey out of the way first. Luckily for us (but not for Bolivia Hop) the bus was only half full because the company is only a few months old and so not that many people are using it. This meant we had 2 seats each so we could stretch out a bit more. After a few hours sleep we got to out first stop which was a place called Puno. Puno isn't much to look at but it is located next to Lake Titicaca which is the highest and largest navigable lake in the world - 8400 sq km in size and 3808m high. The planned activity in Puno was a boat cruise on Lake Titicaca to the Islands of Uros which are floating islands made out of reeds. The place is very touristy but apparently several hundred people do actually live there. The islands are made entirely of reeds which are piled up in a particular way to keep them together and they are also anchored down so they don't float away. Pretty much everything on the islands is made of reeds and they even eat part of the reeds for medicinal purposes. There are gift shops selling lots of reed souvenirs and they have some fancy reed tourist boats. We weren't too keen to go on the tourist boat because you had to pay extra but we were persuaded by the fact the boat was to take us to the capital of the islands which we thought could be worth the money......the boat pulled out a few metres from the island we were on and moved forward a few metres before pulling in at the adjoining island to us that looked exactly the same! You win some you lose some! After an hour or so springing around on the reeds and fearing we were going to go through, we said a quick adios to all of the women who were singing, dancing and trying to sell us reed necklaces and also all the children pestering us for money, and headed back to more solid ground! Following Puno we headed straight to the Peru/Bolivia border and had a very smooth crossing into Bolivia. We had heard that the officials are very corrupt and sometimes make you pay but we didn't experience this. A few people mentioned they had to pay money unexpectedly (Singapore guy and Russian guys) but no charge to the UK contingency....rule Britania!
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