Puno, Puno, Puno....what a funny old place. At a glance from the bus it's a sprawling colourful town, up close its a confusion of road works and crudely half built buildings. Houses, hostels and hotels have clearly sprung up over a short period of time to accommodate the ever growing tourism boom. Puno sits on the edge of Lake Titicaca, the worlds largest high altitude lake.
During our time here we explored the town, visited a church and ventured out into the lake. We took a boat to Uros, a collection of islands that are quite unlike anything we have ever seen before. As we stepped off of the boat onto one of the islands we had the unsteady feeling of stepping on hay bails... Because the island is made of reeds. That's right a floating intricately woven mound of totora reeds. And not just the islands, the houses were made of reeds, the cooking stations and childrens toys were made of reeds and the boats which transport members of the Uros tribe to the main land are made of, you guessed it, reeds.
When we arrived one of the tribe elders sat us all down and explained in Spanish just how they achieved such an amazing community. Luckily he accompanied his explanation with lots of gesticulation and visual aids as our 'poco' Spanish only helped us out so far!
Boat made of reeds
From Puno we took a four hour bus to Copacabana, Bolivia. Copacabana also sits on the edge of Titicaca and is a lot like Puno, but with much more charm and better food! While here we found an amazing restaurant run by a fiercely efficient chap, who was born in La Paz but grew up in Washington DC so spoke with an old school American charm. On our first visit, we knew we had made a good choice as within half an hour the place was full!
While here we also walked a steep hill to the highest point in the town with amazing views over the lake...
After a few days in breezy Copacabana , we headed further into Bolivia to its capital (very high capital, highest city in the world!) La Paz. When we arrived and found a hotel the lady at reception said that she would put us in a room at the back of the building, 'because of the parade' we didn't really take much notice of this comment, but the next morning over breakfast all became clear. It turns out that we had arrived in La Paz on the weekend of El Gran Poder, the festival of folklore which is the biggest parade in Bolivia. Over the course of the day 40,000 performers made their way through the streets of La Paz, all in colourful vibrant costumes dancing and marching in time to a band of drummers and other percussionists. We had a great view from the top of our hotel and had much fun trying to explore the city while it was going on, but felt very privileged to be able to witness such an event.
La Paz is a huge city, which we spent a good few days exploring. On Sunday we had brunch and took in a few of the sights and a couple of museums.
Tomorrow we plan to make our way south to Oruro, but after being told today that the city is closed due to strikes, we may well be stranded in La Paz a few days longer. We'll let you know how it goes next week... Lets be honest though there are worse places to be stuck!
The weeks highlights:
Best view: The view of Gran Poder from the top of our hotel...
The picture does not do it justice!
Best food: The two meals we had in La Orillo, Copacabana were both delicious and warmed us up in the cold evenings! We also had two amazing meals in La Paz, Tambo Colonial, rare llama, quinoa soufflé and chocolate mousse are standouts!
Love Monday Funday: We had a very enjoyable 'touristy' day today. First of all we visited the cities cathedral in the San Fransisco plaza, which had really cool views of the city from its bell tower....
We then wandered over to 'the prettiest street' in La Paz...
After a coffee and cake pit stop we made our way to the other side of the city. We wanted to find Mi Teleferico, which translates into My Cable Car. This is the worlds longest and highest cable car system which only opened in La Paz about a week ago. The line connects La Paz with the neighbouring city of El Alto. Lots of El Altos citizens work in La Paz, but because it is set high up in the mountains, it's a difficult daily round trip for the workers as it involves a very crowded 40 minute minibus journey up the winding, steep roads. Mi Teleferico was built to tackle this major commuting issue and is set to transform the daily routine of thousands of people. We took the cable car to the top and back again and experienced some amazing views over La Paz...
Number of borders crossed: 1
Number of glasses of wine drunk: 10 (it's cold here so we've moved on from beer!)
Much love Lisa and Rachel x
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