Lago Titicaca

Lake Titicaca album - click here

Monday 8-11-2008 Puno Yesterday we flew into the Juliaca airport from Arequipa. Upon exiting the pressurized aircraft, we all immediately found it hard to breath. Juliaca / Puno is around 12,000 feet above sea level. We took a bus for an hour from the airport to our Hotel in Puno – The Hostal Imperial. When we first exited the bus, I was a little worried. First of all, what is a hostal anyway??? Secondly, the street was very rundown, and narrow and dark. I thought, “Why did I let the Travel agent in Lima choose for us????” Well, we went in and handed the desk clerk our voucher and he showed us to our rooms. (In Peru, 4 people need 2 rooms, as there are usually only one double bed or 2 twins in each room). They were clean and seemed fine. Pat felt really terrible. The rest of us just were winded. We headed out to eat – a little scary walking around Puno in the dark. We found Talipan’s – a pizza place! It was good, esp our new favorite appetizer – Tequenos con queso. We went to bed early – everyone with a headache! Today, I woke up with a headache and had one all day. My day started a little hairy. My fault – but I procrastinated on calling a hotel in Cusco for Tuesday night (I’ll blame the cel phone charging situation and the trouble I have had getting ahold of Disney as well, but more on that later), thinking we could just book in the same hotel as our tour – Sol y Luna. Well, it’s completely full! I proceeded to call about 10 hotels in my Insight Peru guide book – all booked! It was getting a little scary, but I finally found one - Andes de America. I talked to the woman awhile and got her name – I sure hope we have a place to stay on arrival in Cusco! Anyway, that was from around 7:30 AM until 8:30AM. After that our tour bus picked us up to head to our tour of Lago Titicaca and Uros Island. I was worried that we might get seasick on our little tour boat, but we were okay (except for the headache situation). I was really pretty down on the whole detour to Puno / Titicaca thing until we pulled up to Uros Island. Incredible!!!! It is a floating island made of reeds. It is still inhabited by the Aymarra, who live in reed huts and cook outside – no electricity. When we stepped off the tour boat, the “land” was squishy! Uros is the closest of I think 4 or 5 floating islands in the lake and is known to be touristy, but it was still incredible. Alex and Rachel bought some reed boat replicas – Rachel even took a picture with the man who made her boat! We even were able to take a short reed boat ride to the other side of the island bay. Once back on the return boat to land, however, my headache became really bad and I was really regretting coming to Puno. We ate lunch and went back to the hotel. I slept and had some orange juice and now am headache-free enough to post. I am happy we were able visit Lago Titicaca after all, and let Alex see one of his requested sites.