Puno on Lake Titicaca

Today was a driving day. We left the Colca Canyon area at 8:30 this morning and took the drive to Puno on Lake Titicaca. We made occasional stops along the way, including for Inca tea, lunch and comfort stops. (One of the side effects of taking the prescription altitude pills is frequent urination.)

We arrived at our hotel at 3:30 p.m. and said our goodbyes to Victor and Juan.

Victor had told us there was a major festival going on in Puno and that we should try and go. It’s the celebration of Candelaria, the patron saint of Puno and has groups of people dancing in the street to marching bands. It’s a huge deal in Peru and the surrounding countries. Of course we wanted to check it out. You can read more about it here:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/artic…

The hotel front desk called a cab for us because our hotel is a distance from the city center, but on the lake. We realize now how wonderful that is. (We ran into a guy from Vancouver we met a couple of days ago and his hotel is near the main square. He said he couldn’t sleep, even with ear plugs.)

It was such bedlam once we got downtown that we ended up jumping out of the cab and walking towards the music, which wasn’t far. The videos and pictures tell the story. At one point, it was so crowded in one of the narrow streets that Brad and I were basically trapped and couldn’t move forward. After about five minutes we decided we’d had our fill and backtracked. We walked away from the activities and got a cab back to the quiet of our hotel.Read more