Cusco to Lake Titicaca

We returned to our hotel in Macchu Pichu, another very interesting place, with its reception and one dining room built between the two sets of narrow gauge railways that lead to and from Macchu Pichu and with cabins so dispersed in the jungle that some of us needed a guide to find them. That night I was the first of our group of 40 intrepid travellers (but not the last) to be struck down with a dreaded lurgy. Whether this was a tummy wog or a result of something I ate or altitude sickness, it set me low for quite a few days and made the subsequent trip by train and bus to Cusco rather difficult.

In Cusco, after a visit by the doctor, I started to pick up and we still managed to see quite a bit of the city, and take photos of the locals clad in their distinctive Peruvian Native garb. We also went (T,C,L,D,J and me to the restaurant Kate had recommended to us after her visit to Cusco, Cicciolini’s and it turned on to be a great place,. We had eaten at many good restaurants as part of the tour but they were for large groups so the intimacy of Cicciolini’s was a good change. One of the not so good was the dinner/cabaret (?) that was part of tour. I had little appetite but those who did assured me that I missed nothing. The entertainment began with smiling,nay grimacing groups of four, dressed in local costume but with Western trim figures (all that exercise rehearsing!, performing quaint Inca dances and when that finished we were set to go home early but our guide assured us the best was yet to come. And it was. Six musicians playing Peruvian flutes, guitars and drums provided a magical conclusion to an otherwise nondescript night. The haunting notes of the original Peruvian melody El Condor Pasa (think Simon and Garfunkle) were followed by Mozart and Beethoven.

As there was a protest on the route south of Cuzco, manifested by the hurling of large rocks on the road/train line, our departure was delayed by a day and a half and finally we had to fly to our next destination, Lake Titicaca, via Lima. We filled in the time with extra short tours and shopping, mainly looking at silver. A tour group relieves the merchants of much of their task of selling as the group members encourage each other in spending frenzies.

We arrived at our hotel at Lake Titicaca very late and in order to make up for time lost due to the protest, we got up very early and were at the Floating islands by 8 a.m. A quick trip to the amazing floating islands, created by linking what looked like thick peat together, allowed us to meet the locals, take some snaps (of course) and then charge on to the shores of Lake Titicaca where we processed our immigration into Bolivia and then boarded a catamaran for a very restful 6 hour trip across the lake. We had one stop on Sun Island which we approached by straw boat. Some of us took the opportunity to don jolly Inca garb and pose as boat rowers. On Sun Island, we climbed a daunting 200 steps, given the very high altitude and saw various performances by the locals, including a blessing of our group by a Sharman clad in the self same boat man’s garb (was it a second job?) and some very pretty vegetable gardens. Jack bought a had bad embroidered with Inc a words of wisdom: "Don’t Steal, Don’t tell lies, Don’t be lazy”. The end of a very long day saw us arriving at La Paz, the administrative capital of Bolivia and the highest capital city in the world.