Boring, Boring Puno

We arrived in Puno 4 days ago and was hit by the hammer blow of altitude sickness. Puno sits at 3830m above sea level and we spent most of the afternoon downing cups of coca tea in a effort to stave off the headaches and nausea. We felt better the following day, so decided to have a look around the town, but due to a South American political summit in Lima most of Peru was given a couple of days holiday. Some of the citizens of Puno decided to use their free time to launch a protest march due to inflation (1KG of rice has gone from $0.50 to $1.80), therefore everything was shut. Puno is a really small town on the edge of Lake Titicaca and there really isn't all that much to do even when everything is open, so with most things shut we managed to pick up a couple of post cards and spent most of the day holed up in the hotel room.

The following day we took a trip to see the floating reed islands and stayed overnight with a local family on Ilsa Amantanì. In the morning we left to spend the day on Isla Taqulie, including a 3km walk across the island, good practice for hiking at altitude when we come to do the Inca Trail hike.

The day after the tour we thought that we would try again to see some of the city, but again it was shut, this time due to a power cut that covered most of the town. Today we are trying once more, but it is Sunday so again most things are shut. This afternoon we are going to take a trip out to the ruins at Sillustani, at last something to do! Tomorrow we leave for Cuzco (yay!!!) on a tourist bus that stops along the way at villages and some of the more interesting ruins, it also passes right over the top of the Andes, the views should be spectacular.

Hopefully Cuzco won't be shut when we get there.