Puno

When you think of a city built on the shores of Lake Titicaca, you probably imagine crystal clear water, great views, and quaint little boats fishing or taking tourists to its many islands...or at least that what I thought. Its turns out that Puno is just a gross little city. The tour guide on our bus from Cusco told us that the majority of Puno´s economy comes from the black market. What this basically means is that instead of their markets being full of fresh food and handmade crafts, they have bootlegged DVDs and crappy electronics. One of the stores that we passed sold gag novelty teeth, fake designer perfumes, and dental insturments. It wasn´t all bad though. Our first night we splurged for an eight dollar filet mignon dinner.

We made the most of our stay in Puno by leaving on day trips. Our first and only full day we went to a tiny Peninsular village called Llachon. We wanted to take a boat there, but we were only offered tours that we didn´t want. No one wanted to give us a straight answer about how to get there by boat. Even when we went to the local docks, it was just people trying to sell us tours. Eventually we gave up on the boat ride and decided to see if we could rent a taxi for the day. This turned out to be the highlight of the trip to Puno for me.

The ride was about an hour and a half through beautiful landscapes. On part of the road where there was construction we just off-roaded for about 20 minutes. About two thirds of it was on a gravel road passing cattle farms. We also saw a couple hawks flying and swooping at something in the fields. We even met a real-life bridge troll or a loquito as our taxi driver called him.

When we were nearing Llachon, from out of nowhere a tiny, stooped man just jumped directly in front of our taxi. His eyes were pure madness as Daniel said and he demanded that we give him bread. He only speaks Quechua by the way, so I really didn´t know what was going on until our driver explained it to us. Our taxi driver had obviously dealt with him before and rolled his window down to give him a bit of money. He yelled that he couldn´t eat that so the cab driver promised that we would come back with bread from the village. The loquito let us pass, but our driver said that if you don´t give him anything he will throw rocks and try to damage your car.

Once in Llachon, we got climbed up to a lookout point that overlooks the lake and afterwards walked down to the beach to dip our feet in it. I think we were the first gringos that had been in Llachon for a while because even the sheep grazing in the pastures were looking at us sideways. The domininant language there was obviously Quechua and it seemed like a place where almost everyone made their living off the land. Its nice to get out of cities sometimes and see the rural side of a country.

The next day we went to the floating reed islands in Lake Titicaca. They were extremely touristy but still amazing. People have been living on this series of islands for 500 years. They were originally created to escape the Spanish conquistadors. The indigenous people learned how to tie together blocks of reed roots which float naturally. Once you have enough of these blocks, it can support an unbelievable amount of weight. Almost everything on the islands is made of dried reeds. On one of the larger islands there is even a school and hospital.

Those were pretty much the highlights of Puno.