I believe in my last post I indicated that our travel experience was put to the test with the boat predicament - well that statement now holds no substance. Today was simply put - a challenge...
What was originally expected to be a relatively quiet day of just lounging around and meandering our way to Arequipa quickly turned awry. We did lounge around and take it very casually in the morning, simply walking around Puno and exploring the city. I guess before delving into the chaos that soon ensued I should preface it with an illustration of Puno.
Puno honestly doesn't have terribly much to offer. The one thing Emma and I will most likely take away is their over abundance of photo-copy stores, there literally were more than we could count on our way from the hostel to the main square - Plaza Del Armas. Aside from this oddity, they didn't have much to offer unless you really are in desperate need to photocopy something, I'd recommend nixing Puno.
The architecture and just overall appearance of the city accurately depicts the economic despair the citizens are in. There are so many, and I mean at times nearly every brick building, that is still only a quarter built with bricks, or walls crumpling down. There's one Main street which we walked down and actually had a great lunch of quinoa soup, sandwiches, lattes and a frozen lemonade in a very quaint courtyard. Aside from that street and the plaza del Armas that had relatively photo taking worthy pictures, I'd say skip out on the dilapidated streets of Puno and take your camera elsewhere. In fact, we were both surprised that Lake a Titicaca is the second most traveled place in Peru, as having seen all of Peru while midst writing this, we would have most likely altered our travel arrangements and focused on seeing places like the Colca Canyon (the deepest canyon in the world with delightful condors); the Nazca lines (some shapes mysteriously drawn into stones that you can only be seen from the air); Ica (an oasis in the dessert where you can go sand boarding or dune bugging); or lastly the Inca Trail (one of the worlds most popular trekking trails; a four day challenging hike to Machu Picchu taking the same road the Incans took). Alas, setting that aside we are still very glad we did travel to the Lake. It certainly was an experience and it was very beautiful and an excellent insight into the culture and daily lives of these locals, not to mention most who visit the lake don't exactly explore Puno at all. We were more or less just surprised how raved about it was, but if time allows for it, it's certainly worth a stop.
Ok - now where the chaos comes into play. We were all set to leave the hostal, packs packed, and set off for the bus station. I also was still feeling ill from stomach pains from who knows what Incan spell was put on me, so a nice 6hr bus ride on the luxurious Cruz del Sur bus was highly anticipated. Unfortunately, there was no such bus....
There happened to be a strike in the nearby city of Juliaca from the coal miners, thus shutting down the roads all around. These strikes can be entirely unpredictable as at any moment they can turn quite violent, road blocks, cars burning, etc, well I'm sure you've all heard your fair share of strike stories in other countries. We had actually been forewarned of these strikes by the professor from the jungle, but he only warned us about the amazon area, so we were unaware that these strikes stretch as far as the Juliaca area.
This caused quite the predicament for us as they said to come back again the next day at the same time to see if the strike was lifted, but that wouldn't get us in until 8pm on Saturday to Arequipa and we had a Sunday morning flight to catch to get back to Lima and then back to the States that evening. If the strike continued we would have been stranded and the only places we could fly out was Arequipa, or well Juliaca which was clearly out of the question; everywhere else you had to travel through Juliaca as Puno is in the very far southeast corner of the country, half of Lake Titicaca is actually in Bolivia.
We talked with a number of other travelers and Peruvians who were in similar predicaments as us, having to also get back to Lima by Sunday, but they were just as lost as us. One very nice couple in their mid-20s, Natives of Lima, were quite helpful and told us that we could take a cambido, a 10person van, that would take an alternative route to avoid the strike. We followed them to the place where the van picked passengers up, a random street corner outside the terminal, no pickup signs, the couple said that the vans come sporadically and not sure when the next one would come, and the passengers were solely locals.
Don't worry mother, we quickly evaluated our surroundings and decided this wasn't the best idea for a couple of easily targeted gringos. I had noticed other bus companies that traveled to Arequipa and decided we should check with them and as a last resort try our luck for the following day with Cruz del Sur. Well we found out that the Julsa bus company was still traveling to Arequipa and we could get seats and still get in later that night.
We weighed our options for over an hour as even though they were taking an alternative route, we'd avoid the strikers but we would be taking side roads and would be traveling the last leg of the journey come dusk/night. We talked with the attendants for the company for a while and they assured us that they have radar trackers on all their buses, showing us their monitors, that the side roads would just be at the very beginning to avoid the strike and we'd be back on the main roads by night, and all their other buses that were running on the hour were making it with ease. Additional reassurance was the sight of some other gringo/traveling tourists on our bus.
We did our little travel jig, ate some Oreos, and were off. The bus ride was actually quite smooth, not as many speed bumps as before, and the only odd experience was the bus driver pulling to the side of the road, hopping out, and meandering over to a roadside stand where he grabbed some coffee and some food. He didn't just grab the food and drink but actually proceeded to sit down at the stand and eat for over ten minutes as we all sat on the bus watching him nom away. These Peruvians sure like to take their time. Earlier when we were waiting for our bus, we watched the driver of another bus that was about to depart brush his teeth aggressively for over eleven minutes, the eleven minutes was only when we had started timing, no idea when he actually started.
Anyways, we flawlessly made it to Arequipa just a little past midnight, caught a cab to our hostal, and ran into another little hiccup. Emma, being the goofball that she is, had accidentally made our reservation for earlier that week at this hostal. Fortunately they did have beds available, but only in the dorms, which wasn't an issue, but Emma did get some serious eye glares from me being almost one in the morning.
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