We awoke early, ate a delicious breakfast at our hotel, took a taxi to the bus depot and bade our adieux to Arequipa, a beautiful, beautiful colonial city, in the middle of Peru. Sun rises early, and this morning light sheds a lovely pinkish glow on all the city buildings. Leaving Arequipa, feels as if we are leaving a friend behind. We thoroughly enjoyed our stay and the people we met.
Boarded the Cruz del Sur buslines one more time, sat back and enjoyed the scenery during our five hour journey to Puno. Similar dry, desert landscape, canyons and heights of land; saw many llamas, alpacas and vicunas, just like the ones pictured on our blog. This time though, the herds were much larger. The landscape changed as we drew closer to Puno. Farming was evident and homes were built of rust-brownish coloured bricks (adobes), the same colour as the soil. Homes have proper roofs of them; we figure that Peruvians here have a better quality of life than the ones we saw in the shantytowns outside of Lima and Arequipa.
Puno is situated in the Southern Highlands, very high in the Andes, and is the port city for the villages around Lake Titikaka. Altitude - 12000 ft above sea level. (Yes, we are taking our altitude pills nightly!) Part of Lake Titikaka belongs to Bolivia - we are that close to this other country. Winter is upon us, it is the dry season, daytime high is 14 above, and lows can go down to 4 above. We are definitely dressing in layers for the weather.
The driver from our hotel picked us up at the bus station, and we meandered through the narrow streets of Puno, alongside decrepid shop buildings, finally arriving at our destination - Hotel Qeqatani, a lovely 3 star place, amidst the hubbub of oddly assorted buildings. The staff advised us to take the elevator to our room as this was our first exposure to this higher altitude and they did not want us fainting on the stairwell! Puno is situated at an altitude higher than Mach Picchu.
After resting a wee bit, we made our way to the tourist agency, All-Ways Travel, booking our tour to Lake Titikaka. This agency is highly recommended by the Lonely Planet, and the people did indeed serve us well.
Bruce and I needed to eat - so we returned to our hotel, ate a light dinner, read and went to bed early.
We had walked up the three flights of stairs to our room, and we were completely out of breath. Can you believe it! Slept wonderfully well - thank goodness!
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