Over the border to Bolivia

24 September
Cruz del Sur bus, Puno to Arequipa

Weather gods normally smile upon us when we travel. Not so yesterday. We had booked an afternoon tour to Sillustani to visit the tower tombs. It had been a beautiful morning, but by the time we left Puno, thunder clouds were on the horizon.  We threw in an umbrella and a poncho just in case and headed off with a jolly crew of Korean Americans and assorted others. By the time we reached the site, the sky was a nasty mix of green and black. Had we been on our own, we would have run around the towers, fired off a few happy snaps and grabbed the first bus out of town. We were trapped!

Our guide insisted on giving us the full routine, even as the wind reached gale force and the rain began to fall. The crafty Koreans managed to detach themselves and, unnoticed,  bolted back to the shelter of the bus. Paul's souvenir cap flew off over a cliff as the temperature dropped to near zero. Amongst the asorted others were a couple of Polish girls, who had come well equipped for such a major weather event. They looked like they had just stepped out into a Warsaw blizzard by the time they had layered up. All we had were light jumpers. At the third "stop for informations", we followed the Koreans' example and headed off at top speed to the bus. We did learn a few things about the tomb towers, including the surprising fact that the Incas only used the site for just over 80 years, until the Spanish invasion. Earlier cultures had used similar towers for burials for up to 700 years prior to the Inca Period. To top off the day, Paul's errant cap was returned by our ever-watchful bus driver who must have seen it sail off the cliff.

All the guide books will tell you that there isn't much to Puno other than the floating islands of Lake Titicaca. Having spent the best part of two days strolling up and down Ave Lima, the main street, we would have to agree. But if you look hard enough there is nearly always something going on in a Peruvian towns. At 10am on our last day, with time to kill as our bus was to leave at 3pm, we spotted a group of MPs and a group of fully kitted-out modern day Peruvian warriors. Further examination revealed preparations for a military parade. We are becoming big fans of South American military parades. We took up front row seats on the edge of the main square with a couple of dozen other retired locals and took in the whole performance, from the arrival of various pieces of equipment, to the careful arrangements of that equipment, through to the removal of that equipment all together. And that was before the Main Event! More military arrived, groups of Indigenous in traditional dress lined up and the excitement built as the band could be heard warming up on a side street. Not all went to plan though as we were shooed off our front row seats by a baton-wielding lady soldier. Not at all phased, we took up lower quality seats on the steps of the Cathedral with the locals. What a show! Led by a large group of pre-school kids done up as angels, the parade was on. Altar boys and girls, incense-dispersing priests and the statue of the Virgin Mary on a plinth, held high on the shoulders of soldiers.

The now-familar Peruvian national anthem was cranked up, the crowd stood, including us, hats off, hands on hearts rifles at "present arms", hundreds of military singing along with "mucho gusto". We all finished off with a resounding "Viva Peru"!  The parade pressed on up the main street with school children, more local cultural groups and, of course, the soldiers. What a way to kill a few hours.

There was a very interesting cultural lesson about Peru in all this. There was a strong message in all we saw. The military ran the show, but the church, the local community and indigenous groups all played a part. Given that the celebration was a religious feast day, the leading role of the military would seem out of place in most countries. Not in Peru!

Another interesting observation is that Peruvian cultural heritage is "cool". The biggest thing among teenagers seems to be traditional dancing and music. It is fairly common to see large groups of kids practising traditional dance in town squares. Groups of teenagers, mostly boys, gather on corners playing traditional tunes. Groups of girls hang about, just listening of course.

25 September, Casa Tintin,
Arequipa

Despite the rather odd name, our Tintin hotel is really very nice, situated in a secure residential area with a fantastic view of the snow-capped volcanoes that surround the city. Arequipa is the second largest city in Peru, but at around 1 million people, it is dwarfed by Lima with almost 9 million inhabitants. We did a fair bit of walking around the city and inner suburbs today and were very impressed. Like most towns and cities in Peru, Arequipa's streets are extremely clean, if a little delapidated in places. It is just amazing how little litter there is, even in small villages. People seem to take responsibility for their own footpaths, constantly sweeping and washing away the dust.

Arequipa's main plaza is just beautiful. A creamy white stone is used through most of the central city and with the bright sunlight and brilliant blue sky today it was just a picture. Sadly, the Cathedral that runs the length of one side of the plaza was covered in scafolding. We only have one day here and a lot of today was spent chasing up tour companies for our trip through Colca Canyon. Frustratingly, we were fed a lot of rot by some companies here and in Puno about canyon tours. We eventually found Giardino Tours, who knew immediately what we were talking about and booked us up for tomorrow. Sometimes you have to wonder whether some of these local companies just play dumb, forgetting that there is such a thing as the internet!

Sitting on our balcony with the volcanoes looming in the late afternoon glow, kids playing in the park below and the rubbish truck moving slowly through the neighbourhood, blaring out some recognised but not named number by the Shadows. Earlier on this afternoon we were almost knocked off the footpath by the sound of another garbage truck playing some Spanish number at ear-splitting volume, must be what they do to let the locals know they are coming, A bit like Mr Whippy we guess, but with more volume.


28 September, Copacabana, Bolivia

The fact that our last blog was on 25 September is an indication of just how flat out we have been. Arequipa seems such a long time ago. A string of very early mornings, long bus trips and some spectacular places has well and truly filled in the time.

From Arequipa, we took a two day, one night tour out into the Colca Canyon. Our group was a hodge-podge of two option groups from larger tours and us, generally pleasant souls, but two days with a few of them was about all we could tolerate. The drive out to the canyon was through a National Park that boasted some wild native animals, including puma, but all we managed to see were llama, alpaca, sheep and some wild relatives of the llama whose name we never caught. We also managed to spot a couple of condor, but from a fairly great distance.

While the wildlife-spotting was a little disappointing, the scenery was far from a disappointment. The scale of the upper plains of the Andes is just breathtaking. It is the dry season, so the landscape is bare and dry. A moonscape is probably an apt description. Beyond the plains, in the distance, four enormous volcanoes loom, one sending up a constant steam cloud. As we climbed into the higher Andes the temperature stayed amazingly warm. We are much better with the altitude now. At close to 5000m we are almost back to our sea level respiration rate. We did a couple of short hikes, one to some hot springs out side the village of Coporaque, where we spent the night. We weren't terribly excited about the colour of the water in the hot springs so we passed on a dip. Many of the villages in this area are extremely poor, particularly those that depend solely on agriculture. As with many other areas we have visited in Peru, the land is quite rich and productive, but the scale of production is holding agriculture back. Bullocks pull ploughs and men chip and cultivate by hand on the narrow terraces, many of which were built more than 1500 years ago in pre-Inca times. Again we need to remind ourselves just how recent the Inca empire really was. In the Colca Canyon area, the Inca were in power for less than 100 years before they were overcome by the Spanish in 1535.

We were on the road early on the second day of our tour to see tha Condors at Condor Crossing. Our guide recommended a 50 minute hike along the rim of the canyon for better condor viewing. We saw more than the hundreds of other tourists perched around the peak of the crossing, but the birds were a long way off.

After avoiding another enormous lunch, (if we spent more than a couple of days on a tour we would be unable to walk! Three course lunches seem to be the norm. We were able to negotiate our intake down to a plate of soup.) we joined yet another tour group for the transfer back to Puno.

Today's bus excursion took us on a rather cramped, long distance coach across the border into Bolivia and the small lakeside town of Copacabana. This was our first land border crossing in South America and it was just as advertised. On the Peru side only two immigration officers were on duty. One of these was engaged in a long-running argument with a woman who seemed to be short some significant documentation. She kept half the the total processing power of the immigration office off line for at least 20 minutes. More buses arived, the lines grew and we stood in the belting sun! Eventually, we were processed and wandered up the hill to seek out the Bolivian customs and immigration post. Not too hard to find it as it turned out. It was the building with the long line of travellers now standing in the blistering Bolivian sun. All this said, we may have been lucky. We hear that this crossing can take up to 3 hours!

Copacabana is extremely touristy, catering to the young back-packer trade. We were definitely the oldest people on our bus and, with the exception of a couple of local women staying in our hotel, we may well be the oldest travellers in town. Our reason for being here has nothing to do with the party atmosphere. We  will take a ferry tomorrow morning for the Isla Del Sol to do a three hour hike over the island, north to south.