Into the Altiplano

19 September
Kenamari Hotel, Cusco

Off at a civilised hour this morning as we have all day to get back to Cusco. We have really enjoyed our short stay in Ollantaytambo and this morning we wandered back down towards the train station to pick up a colectivo for Cusco. These "group ride" minivan taxis wait until they are close to full then take off,  seeking to get a full load as early as possible during the journey. By repute many of the drivers are reckless and the evidence of the road toll is sufficient evidence in support of this notion. Happily for us, our driver was very cautious, although the speed of his cornering left us a little short of breath at times. We were the only foreigners on the bus but, as usual, conducting business is extremely easy -although, if we hadn't learned the cost from other punters, in earshot of the driver, we may well have been charged more than the $5 for the almost 2 hour trip.

Back in Cusco we have had another easy day preparing the next two legs of our travels. Our usual routine is to book our transport for the next leg and then the hotel. We try not to get more than a few days ahead, just in case some spanner drops into the works . However, needing a room on a weekend, when rooms were fast disappearing, we bit the bullet.

20 September
Kenamari Hotel

Off to see the Sacred Valley today on the local colectivos, regional buses. We could have saved our time on the internet and guide books planning this trip. It ended up being a breeze. We only saw a couple of non-locals on the buses we took and they were all packed. No wonder, the fares for legs of around an hour each were 3-4 Sol, AUD $1.25 - $2.25. Many hundreds of tourists chose to be led by the nose around the sites and we understand  that is their thing, but what they miss out on is the local contacts. Getting lost is always on the cards and we are expert at that. The real fun is getting out of those situations. Reading  maps, asking locals or following people who look like they might be going our way have all worked for us . We wonder whether many others avoid taking local routes to attractions, instead seeking out tours is an over-baked concern about personal security. All the people we travelled with today, or saw on the streets were just simple country folk going about their business., Nobody was threatening towards us, on the contrary, many people came forward to help us. These are not new experiences for us. Throughout South-east Asia and Southern Africa, it has been exactly the same.We sometimes wonder if these dangers are exaggerated by tour companies to convince travellers that an organised tour is the only way to travel. We get a lot of laughs over the weekends reading Doc Holiday in the local paper. Every response ends with a plug for one travel company or another.  We also suspect that the questions are from those self same companies.

lS

Rural Peru is still rather undeveloped. Tractors are few. Fields are too small to be efficient and transport and marketing are still rudimentary. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be the same drive for improvement as there is in SE-Asia. A good indicator of this is the number of incomplete building projects that litter the countryside.

But back to today. The ruins at Pisac were nothing like the scale of those we have seen over the past couple of days. Interesting, but not spectacular. The best part of the day was riding the local buses. The dangers of local buses in Peru are probably overstated. Bus-jacking? Who would bother bus-jacking a clapped-out bus loaded with poor farmers? Road accidents? Yes a risk, but we have not had a driver who we would call totally careless. Mind you, the rules of the road in rural Peru are a little frightening. As we see it these rules are: 1. Pass whatever is in front of you at all costs. 2. If the vehicle slowing you down is a bus or a truck, it must be passed on a blind corner, 3. If it is just impossible to pass the vehicle in front, the driver must lean on his horn for periods of no less than 30 seconds at a time.


22 September, La Hacienda Hotel
Puno, Peru

As readers might have gathered, we are not big fans of guided tours. Guides do have their place though, I guess we just don't like to pay to visit sites, museums  and other attractions and to be forced to move at somebody else's pace. We can't even adjust to each other's pace and mostly wander off individually to pursue our own interests. However, we have developed strategies to get the best of both worlds. We call it guide-hopping. Anywhere in the world, you can hear English-speaking guides regaling small groups with sometimes interesting facts about a particular painting, structure or cultural highlight. Guide-hopping requires the "hoppee" to hang about within earshot while focusing attention on some other display in the immediate vicinity. At large outdoor sites feigning exhaustion and taking up a seat near the group works well also. Sadly technology is making life more difficult for the "guide-hoppers". Some groups now use small FM transmitters to communicate with their flock.

Yesterday we took a 7 hour bus trip from Cusco to Puno, travelling through some beautiful Altiplano scenery. Take the backdrop of mountains away and we could have been on the rolling plains of Mongolia. This is grazing country and small heards id alpaca, sheep and cattle dot the open range. The villages in this area are generally neat and tidy with the odd deserted shack and tumble-down walls. The predominant building material is a dark-brown mud brick. Corrugated iron has replaced thatch on most of the houses and solid brick out-houses with water tanks on the roof are the norm.

Just before Puno, we passed through one of the ugliest cities we have ever seen. Juliaca. This is by repute the most dangerous city in Peru, and even in bright afternoon shine it felt unsafe. To make matters worse the main road through town is being repaired, so clouds of dust swirl around the burnt-out cars and the piles of road base dumped in the middle of the street every few blocks cause traffic to make its own way around the works. A total shambles!

7

Lake Titicaca is the reason most travellers come to Puno and the floating reed villages are the main attraction. We took what we thought was a local ferry to the Uros Islands on a near-perfect day. As it turned out we were on a tour of sorts, but as it turned out it was fairly good value. Villages float on a mixture of the reeds and a peat like material that the indians cut from the reed beds. The reeds are placed in layers over the floating base, allowed to dry, then built up with reeds over and over, layer upon layer, in a continuous process with rotting reeds at the bottom of the pile needing to be replaced to keep the islands above water level.