Cusco to Puno

A solid gold statue the Spanish didn't find

For our final day we had a ‘free day’. I spent this doing a tour with Neil and the others in the morning. Although we had seen a lot of the city already, we didn’t necessarily know the significance of the buildings and squares. That finished around midday and we went to get lunch. We bumped into Jana and Leo, who were waiting for Ashley, who arrived with Sam and Kate. So it was pretty much our whole tour going out for lunch together (the coffee museum again!) In fairness, Susie and I had found crepe place but it was shut on Mondays.

San Pedro Markets

I spent the afternoon relaxing at the hotel while the others shopped, or in Susie’s case, went to the clinic for release papers.

Then we went out for dinner to a place that specialised in Llama steaks. I ate one! It was like the texture of pork and flavour of lamb. I justified it to myself as they are pretty much the most free-range animals around here. I also tried my first pisco sour.

Afterwards, we went to the happening club Changos. In was completely empty, and the staff numbered us 5 to 1. There was red bull sports playing on the TV and a beer pong table in the middle of the dance floor. After some awkward dancing to terrible reggae, people turned up around 10pm and it started playing more Spanish hits.

Some of the others could really dance! I got home around midnight, with two of the other girls who needed to tap out ‘early’. But the others made so much racket, I didn’t get much sleep.

At 6am I was up, had a shower and breakfast, my main meal of the day with an 8 hour bus ride. We got a transfer to the station (Neil told us we were walking, so that was a nice surprise!) The bus was so luxiorous - like the overnight one in Brazil. The seats were so wide and reclined right back. I slept for most of the morning and afternoon – we got in at 4pm.

Puno seemed like quite a dire, poor city with no nice architecture. It is on the shores of Lake Titicaca. But where we are staying, between the two main squares actually has lots of nice restaurants and pharmacies - a good sign in our experience! We had a short orientation walk with Neil, then Susie and I went back to our room.

We had dinner at this insane restaurant with an amateur folk dance - there were loads of dances and crazy satin costumes. Some of the other girls tried the local delicacy - guinea pig! It came out with it's head on the plate so I could only eat a little bit. It tasted like duck but less salty.