Helen's Andean Adventure

Trip to Peru (contd)

Travelling the Latin American style (Monday):
In order for Meg to see Lake Titicaca, we chose to travel back to Bolivia on the ground, i.e. by bus.The trip started with a 6-hour leg from Cusco to Puno on a fairly nice bus filled with tourists like us (the bus had a TV, a bathroom, and a snack service).Once in Puno, a town on the lake, we had to get on another bus going to Desaguadero, a border town on the Bolivian side.This bus was small uncomfortable where we got stuck on the back row crammed in between several other passengers.About 15 minutes into the journey, the bus got a flat tire...unfortunately, the bus driver didn't have the necessary instruments or the tire (I couldn't understand which one he lacked in the disgruntled conversations of other passengers).Several people got off the bus and crammed themselves into other buses going in the same direction...Meg and I chose to stay and wait and were rewarded when the tire finally got replaced (about 45 min later) and we were able to get better seats. Besides, most of this part of our trip was along the shores of the magnificent Lake Titicaca (even though the Peruvian side of it is not as pretty as the Bolivian side, but maybe Im just biased). I was also happy to see more of the altiplano with beautiful mountains against clear blue sky and fields with all sorts of farm animals including my beloved camelids represented here mostly by alpacas.
In about 2.5 hours we reached the Peruvian-Bolivian border, went through both checkpoints, and once on the Bolivian side, in Desaguadero, climbed into a Toyota minivan that took us on a two-hour trip back to La Paz (as you can guess, our travelling conditions got worse and worse with each leg of the journey).
Anyway, 3 buses and 13 hours of travelling later, we are back to our house in La Paz and packing for our trip to Salar de Uyuni tomorrow.

posted by HM @ 11:00 PM