Long way from Puno to Uyuni – how a strike changes your plans

For once we had a quite tight schedule for a few days. We had arrived back to Puno from Cusco to continue our journey to La Paz, Bolivia. We had booked one night in Puno because we could not cross the Bolivian border in the night. But then… We heard that there would be a strike/road block in Puno the next two days and no buses would come or leave Puno during that time. We had already been in Puno before and really didn’t feel like spending two more days there. Even if Johan and Maria would’ve also been there 😃

We discussed the issue with our hostel’s (HomeCenter Puno) receptionist and they told us that there would be a speed boat going from Puno to Yunguyo, close to Bolivia’s border. The boat should have left at 7am, but it left around 7.20am. The ride should’ve been 3,5 hours, but it was about 5 hours. We were expecting to come to a harbor, but instead we stopped in shallow water. Everyone was wondering what happened and then we noticed a small ROWING boat with two people in it. We then realized that the rowing boat was there to transport all apprx. 40 people and the luggage to the shore. The boat was leaking and the bottom was covered in water. We came to the main land and there the rowing boat couple wanted money. We had asked before if we had to pay anything extra and the hostel said no. We felt that it was not okay to ask the passengers for money – the couple should’ve asked the boat company for extra compensation instead.

Inca Trail – The longer way to Machu Picchu

After a not so well slept night, we woke up at 4.40am and packed the last stuff before starting the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu with Bamba Experience. The typical Inca Trail is a 4d/4n hike on a path that goes through valleys and mountains. The highest point was only at 4200 meters so for us it was not a problem since we had been at high altitude places for the past few weeks. We had been waiting for the Inca trail with both excitement and fear. We guessed it would be really tough but with amazing views of the mountains and valleys.

View from Inca trail

Sacred Valley

We went to Bamba experience to ask few questions about the upcoming Inca Trail and to check if they would have Sacred Valley and Rainbow Mountain tours. They offered us a three or five site tours. They told us that the five site option would be quite hectic and that we wouldn’t have that much time in each place but the other didn’t contain the Moray (the famous round Inka terraces) nor Moras (salt mine/farm) and we wanted to see at least Moray so we choose the five site tour.

The circles of Moray we wanted to see

Cusco – restaurants, handicraft markets and traffic police women

From Puno we took a night bus (Transzela) to Cusco. It arrived around 5am to Cusco and we took ourselves directly to our hostel hoping to get maybe more sleep or at least leave our luggage there. We had booked one night at Hostal el Labrador. Unfortunately, the front of the hotel was under road construction and it was a bit challenging to get to the hostel with all the luggage. But we managed to come in and the hostel was kind enough to let us in a spare room to get more sleep until our own room would be ready. Much appreciated! But the room was a bit small and the shower was not very good – mainly cold water. The breakfast was not very inspiring either. Well, it was the same that almost every hostel has – same white bread, butter, jam and tea. We searched for other options and found one hotel for a good price on Hotels.com. We booked 7 nights at Waynapicchu hotel. It was not as close to the centrum, but not too far away either. The room was nice, staff helpful (got us a heater for example when we said that our room was very cold), and there were different fruits at breakfast too. 😊

Well, enough about the accommodation, let’s see what we did during our time in Cusco 😃 First of all, it is nice to just walk around. There are lot of handicraft shops and different markets all over and it is just nice to see all the colorful textiles and interesting food markets. We learned later on from some Dutch tourists that many of the handicraft products are actually made in China and not at all the material the sellers claim them to be 😩 Once we saw some real alpaca products and the price difference, we understood that most of the products that are sold as “alpaca” are actually just something synthetic. That’s a pity. But we did find some cotton products and other things that we believe are “real” materials 😃

Beautiful colors in different fabric shops

Puno: Anniversary celebrations and Saturday market

We arrived in the evening to Puno and for our pleasure, it was the weekend of Puno's anniversary. This meant parades every now and then on different days and especially on the 5 of November when the actual anniversary was. On our night of arrival there were only adults in the parades and we noticed it was rather similar to the Finnish 'vappu': bottles went around and everyone in the parade enjoyed their drinks.

Festive shoes

Colca Canyon - One of the world's deepest canyons

Our trip to Cabanaconde continued with a local bus about 30 min after we arrived to Arequipa. It took an hour for the bus to get out of the city because there were some constructions on the roads because the car amount in Arequipa has increased radically so the roads start to get too small. Well, when we finally got out of the city, the views stated to look good. A lot of smaller and bigger mountains, rivers, alpacas and other nice landscape. We used Andalucia bus company because their bus left earliest. The bus was quite old and the suspensions had seen their best days so we could feel all the big and small holes and bums on the road ;) The bus went first to Chivay, a small city, about 4 hours from Arequipa and 2 from Cabanaconde where we were heading. When we finally arrived to Cabanaconde, we had basically been travelling with a bus for 16 hours from Nasca to Cabanaconde.

Huacachina & Nasca: Dunes, airplanes and skulls

We had heard that the best buggy rides and sandboarding would be in Huacachina. Therefore we decided to go to a small oasis in the middle of sand dunes near to the town Ica. It was not a long bus ride from Paracas, only a bit over an hour. Huacachina is a pretty interesting place – a small lake surrounded by a few streets and amazing sand dunes in every direction.

Huacachina

Paracas - Biking, kitesurfing and Ballestas Islands

Markus had heard that Paracas, where we are going to stay at first, should have good spots for kitesurfing! We landed late in the evening to Lima in Peru where we had to stay one night. At the airport, we tried to order an Uber but Markus’ Uber app got some error and we didn’t know if we had ordered a car. When the app was opened, it informed that we should go to exit door 3 and wait for the driver. We went there even if we weren’t sure if our car is coming. After a while a man asked:  Markus? And there our Uber was. It was only a 1,2km long ride, but apparently, Lima is not that safe during Friday nights. When we wanted to go out from the car to check where our B&B Cusing Wasi was but the driver prohibited and said “not safe”. After a short looking we found our place and had a nice sleep before we continued our journey to Paracas. It was a 3 hour bus ride to Pisco and then a 10 min taxi drive to Paracas.