Puno

We arrived in Puno an hour and a half later than scheduled (which, for those of you following the itinerary, is actually a few hours later than planned as we stayed an extra night in Cusco to acclimatise better). This means no sunrise in Puno, as instead, we arrived at around 4pm. Not too disappointed though, there is not much here and I felt a little dizzy on arrival so we just headed to the room and Richard went to get food. Chicken and chips went down a treat and we all felt a lot better afterward. We went for a wander after this, just after the sunset. We headed for the lake and ended up walking down a very long and bustling market street. You couldn't tell where market stalls ended and pathways/roads began. I don't think we were on the tourist route as we saw no other white people, but it was awesome to walk through it, stepping over raw meat that was casually laid out on the street and weaving through stalls of all sorts. Seeing as this was a locals market, it was actually quite refreshing not to be bugged to buy something at every turn, instead we found ourselves stared at occasionally because of our height and, I imagine, our skin colour!

We strolled down another street after a trip to the supermarket and here we found the rest of the tourists, where we were pestered once again. We are used to it now though and have gotten much better at avoiding it, but it was funny watching others get tourist trapped.

After stopping for ice-cream, we arrived back at the hostel and chilled for a bit (I also updated photos on the blog so have a scroll through previous posts to see these). We were then interrupted by a huge lightening storm!! It was INSANE!!!! And it's still going on now, over two hours later. We stood in the doorway of the hostel, watching the lightening and listening to the thundercracks, which were like nothing I have ever heard before. They were so, so loud and like a gunshot! Half way through us watching in amazement, the town suddenly went pitch black. It was pretty awesome and the black-out lasted about ten minutes before finally, the power came back on. With the streetlights back on, the light revealed a small river where once there was a street outside. With this gushing outside and the noise of the rain and thunder, we will just have to hope we are tired enough to sleep over it!

We came back inside and enjoyed a cuppa with a couple of girls also from UK, they were waiting for their bus to where we have just been. They have just done Bolivia, so it was interesting to hear what they had to say. Apparently the toilets are horrendous, yay! And the salt flats are freezing at night. Oh, and we will get to 5000m on one of the days on the flats...eeeek! Altitude sickness tablets were advised, but at least we have acclimatised fairly well so far. No headaches as of yet!

Off to sleep now.

Night night!Read more