After the hot, sweaty fun of the internet cafe, I headed back to the hotel to wait for the bus from Sandoval Lake Lodge to pick me up. The bus dropped by and we departed for the boat terminal, which is really just a wooden stairway down to a small dock on the Tambopata river. The boats are motorized and hold about 25 people plus backpacks under a canopy.

We took off down the river until it joined the Madre de Dios, and continued on for about forty minutes. En route, we were served a box lunch that consisted of a tofu fried rice, wrapped in a large banana leaf. It was surprisingly tasty and filling.


Once we arrived at the dock for the access to the jungle park, we unloaded the boat and watched the porters run down the trail ahead of us with our luggage loaded on a rickshaw. We followed for a few hundred meters until we reached the ranger station, where we were required to sign in.




The rest of the hike to the lodge was about 3 km along a flat, but very very hot trail through the jungle. Our guide Oscar pointed out various trees we should not touch and other general warnings before we reached the flooded palm forest.





We boarded canoes and traversed the flooded palm forest until we emerged out onto Lake Sandoval. We skirted the edges of the lake for a while until Oscar spotted the most famous inhabitants of the lake, the giant river otters. Apparently, you have a 50-50 chance of seeing them as they are shy and tend to stay away from boats.

By the time we reached the lodge, all of us were exhausted. We were shown to our rooms, which were really quite nice and clean. Some people took showers but since we had an evening expedition planned to look for spiders and monkeys and such, I figured I would wait until just before dinner time to clean up.




The lodge only runs the electricity generators three times a day, but luckily the last power window of the day is the longest. We ate good, native foods and enjoyed the native fruits.. and the bar was a welcome sight! I went to bed about 9 pm but couldn't sleep too well: there were no windows in my room (only screens) and the combination of heat, humidity, sounds of the jungle critters and the mosquito netting never allowed me to fall into a deep slumber.

So most of the past two days have been traveling and acclimating time. I had a good dinner Saturday night and did some gift shopping, but mostly I walked around Cusco in the pleasant evening air. Sunday morning I headed for the airport and boarded my plane to Puerto Maldonado.

PM had such great promise: jungle town, different culture, different way of life. Unfortunately, the expectations failed to deliver. PM is just a nasty crossroads, where goods from Brasil must pass on their way to Cusco and Lima. Commerce and tourism are about the only thing PM has going for it, and the people reflect that. I have never had so many glaring looks the entire time I´ve been in Peru. It´s almost as though they resent me being here.

I am in the world´s slowest internet cafe at the moment, wasting time until the Lago Sandoval Lodge comes to pick me up for my jungle excusrsion. I´ve sweat through my shirt twice today (the official term is "ball-sweaty hot") so I am not really in the mood to wait 5 minutes for each web page to load. The heat, along with the craptacular accomodation of last night, have put me in a bad mood today. I´m trying, really I am, but I think the solo traveler crap is catching up with. Any of the bad things that have happened to me in the past two days would have been easy to laugh off if there was somebody else experiencing it with me, somebody to act as a sounding board, somebody to joke with.

I´ll post more details when I have more time, probably after I return home on Friday. Unless a monkey attacks me in the jungle and eats my brains. If that happens, I suppose I will see you in hell.

Today's posts and photo uploads are courtesy of the South American Explorers club (saexplorers.org). Their Cusco club house overlooks the city and has, among other things, free wi-fi for members. If you're headed to South America, the club is a great resource, if only for luggage storage, guide books, and access to the internet.

So far, today has been a lazy day. I missed breakfast and walked around a few shops -- bought some postcards. I will try to fill them out and send today.

I scoped out a couple of lavendarias because I am completely out of clean (or reasonably clean) clothes. Once I check into my hostal for tonight, I will drop off enough clothes to last the remainder of the trip.

I am playing with the idea of buying a small bag of some sort to bring back gifts. My biggest concerns are:

a) I don't really want to drag another piece of luggage for the rest of the trip. Granted, the rest of the trip will be a taxi to the airport, a flight to Puerto Maldonado, and a flight back to Lima.
b) Will I be charged extra for the second piece of checked luggage on the internal Peru flights? I know I will be charged for the international flight back to Miami and my Delta flights in the US.
c) It's Saturday, so shipping things via FedEx or DHL is not an option, as they're closed until Monday. Maybe I can carry around the bag until then and ship from PM or Lima?

I left Puno behind today on the InkaExpress bus. Normally, I would have taken the cheap locals' coach, but the InkaExpress office was three doors down from the hotel and I was ready to get out of town. The rate is expensive in comparison to my s/15 trip to Puno at US$30, but that included lunch and a tour of a few attractions along the way.

As we left Puno, the evidence of the strike was visible on the roads out of Puno, the edges of Juliaca, and a few other places along the highway: stone hedges had been toppled, and the rocks strewn across the roads; bottles and been smashed everywhere on the roads; garbage and debris had been set on fire as large bonfires, also blocking the roads. It was quite a sight... I have not heard of any injuries or deaths.

Our first stop was the small village of Pukara, where archeologists had excavated pottery and sculptures from a local pyramid. The town was pretty nondescript other than the museum and large church. Pukara is also the village where all of the good-luck bull sculptures that adorn most of the roofs in the Cusco and Puno departments are made. There was (coincidentally?) several vendors' stands set up next to the bus parking area.

We stopped briefly at La Raya pass in the Andes, which is about 4xxx meters above sea level. It was mostly a photo opportunity (several snow-capped, glacier-laden mountains were nearby)... but again many vendors had stands set up at this rest area... I was starting to sense a theme to our tour stops. Many, many other buses stopped at the same spot.

We drove a bit further to the city of Secauni, where we ate lunch at a local buffet restaurant (Las Tunas?). The food was good but we had to walk by even more vendors selling their identical handicrafts.

We stopped later at Raqchi, which was my favorite stop of the day. Raqchi is an Inka temple that was not destroyed by the Spaniards, and much of the center wall structure, housing areas, and granaries are still standing. Check out the photo stream on flickr once I have them uploaded. Once more, we were forced to pass through a maze of craft stalls to get back to the bus.

Our last stop before Cusco was in a small village called Andauaylillas, where a very large and ornate cathedral stands. The church is nicknamed the "Sistine chapel of Peru" for its ornate frescos on the walls and ceilings. The large alter, clad in 24K gold, is amazing. No photos are allowed (to force visitors to buy postcards and books to support the restoration fund), but I will see if I can Google up some photos once I return home.

Now we had returned to Cusco, and my real adventure was just beginning. Although I had called the hostal and made a reservation for the evening (I already had a reservation for Saturday night), when I arrived at the hostal they were full. The receptionist called around to all of the nearby hostals but had no luck. I flipped through the Lonely Planet guide and suggested he call the Hostal Loretto, which I had noticed last week when I was in Cusco. They had one room left and I took it. The room was small (think "closet") but had a clean shower, clean bed and I was set for the night. Whew!

The strike is apparently over, and I will be taking the InkaExpress bus back to Cusco this morning. I got up early to use the hotel's internet kiosk, and thought I would post a bit about last night's dinner adventure.

I went to a place called Pizzaria del Buho. I know, why have pizza in Peru when there are native dishes to explore? I just felt like pizza, ok? Get off my back.

The restaurant was busy and the service was made even slower by the live sextet performing Andean music for the patrons, but I didn't care as I got a seat at the last available table and a large cerveza. Some girls came in and started to leave when they saw there were no open tables, but I offered to share my table with them and they accepted.

The girls turned out to be from Russia, Moscow specifically. I have encountered many Russians on this trip, but they have all been extremely nice. The girls and I ate some pizza and had a few beers, where we communicated through broken English and Spanish. They even attempted to teach me some Russian words: pizza, beer, water, breasts (don't ask), and I think they even tried to teach me the phrase for "Would you like to go back to my place?"... but quite frankly the only phrase I remember saying over and over was "tres cervezas mas, por favor!" Needless to say, the night was long and fun-filled.

^* As far as I can remember, I slept alone last night... so the title of this entry is not the bit of double entendre that you may have first suspected.

I went out to dinner last night about 7 PM and was happy to see that the city had sprung back to life. All of the shops that were closed during the day were now open, including the banks. I had some dinner on Calle Lima and saw buses! and minibuses! and private taxis! I was encouraged that the strike was only going to be one day as many had suggested.

This morning, however, the city was silent again. No buses and no taxis were on the streets -- only garbage that had spilled over the rubush bins. The strike was still on. I had breakfast in the hotel restaurant and headed back out to sit in the plaza for a while. There is literally nothing to do in Puno during the strike. No businesses are open and there is nowhere to go, as there is no transportation available. One cannot even pay a private citizen to drive them somewhere in a private car, as no petrol stations are open and the roads out of the city are blockaded by strikers. Fun fun fun.

It does appear the strike will end tonight, as I was able to purchase a bus ticket back to Cusco for tomorrow morning. This officially means that I will not be going to Bolivia on this trip, and that does disappoint me a bit. This turn of events does, however, give me a reason to return to this part of the world at some time in the future.

My plans for the remainder of the day include a walk around the town again, and dinner. Very exciting, no?

Stuck in Puno... While the strike is ongoing, there's really not a lot to do in Puno during the day. I went for a long walk this morning but some of the parts of town I was in were a bit dodgy and I received a few looks from the locals that made me think twice about exploring more of the city. In the main plazas and the touristy areas, the policia and the army were out in force (apparently to prevent the strikers from inflicting violence upon the scabs who did not shut their shops today), but in the other parts of town I did not see any police prescence. I hung out in the main plaza for a while but that eventually lost its appeal.

I had some lunch a Ukuku's, which was one of the few places open for business. I'm not sure exactly what it was I ate, but that's part of the fun, right? I headed back to the hotel and had a siesta and watched the UEFA Cup on ESPN Desportes.

I received a distressing phone call from a friend in the States... a good friend of ours passed away. I have not had a chance to process this information yet and I have no details of how it happened... and most likely I will not be back in the States for the funeral. Rick was a great man and loved his wife and daughters, and he will be missed. This really puts my current suituation of being stuck in Puno into proper perspective.

I had signed up for a tour of Uros and Taquile Islands in Lake Titcaca with AllWays Tours. They called the night before and confirmed they would meet me in the lobby at 0650. I was met by a minibus and headed out to the docks.

There were about 22 other people on this particular tour from other hotels, and all but one of them were already paired up in couples, so the lone other single person and I paired up. Tania is a russian flight attendant from Dubai, who works for Emirate Airlines. She was on holliday with her coworker Briggeda and Briggeda's husband John. Let me tell you right now, Tania is exactly what you imagine when you think of a young, blonde, russian flight attendant. I am certain that I was staring at her most of the day. She was nice, however, and didn't seem to care. I was a bit disappointed that her biggest concern was finding the good discoteques and bars in Puno. She still ranks as the number two girl I have met on this trip -- which doesn't matter at all as I am too old and too ugly for either of them to be interested in me.

Our first stop was one of the floating Uros Isalnds. These islands are built of layers of tortoro reeds that grow in the shallow parts of the lake. The island we visited was one of the many that catered purely to tourists, but it was nice none the less. Other islands are off-limits to tourists to preserve the traditional culture.

We then departed for Taquile Island, a trip that took about two hours. I sat on the upper deck for a while but came back down and slept. Once we arrived, we discovered that the dock is about 500m lower than the main plaza of the island, so we had to hike up to about 4000m (12,000+ feet). This was by far much more of a chore than any of the climbing at Machu Pichu or Ollantaytambo, but both are at lower altitudes. Upon arrival at the main plaza, we had a traditional lunch and explored for a bit, but the rain appeared again and put a damper on sightseeing.

We then hiked down the 500 steps to the dock on the other side of the island to meet our boat, and found out that the local indiginous peoples of Puno, Juliaca and Arrequipa were planning to go on strike for the next two days -- buses, trains, most shops, everything would be closed for 48 hours. Some of the members of the group were able to arrange a bus alternative this evening instead of the train tomorrow to Cusco, and I arranged a private taxi top take me to the Bolivian border. I was supposed to take the bus to Bolivia on Wednesday morning. However, there was a problem: the Bolivian border closes at 6 pm and the drive takes about 2 hours, so leaving after 5pm from Puno would not work.

I will check with AllWays Travel tomorrow to see if they can arrange some sort of transportation to Boliva, depending on how bad the strike is. Otherwise, I am stuck in Puno for two more days and will probably have to cancel the Bolivian portion of my trip to make it to Puerto Maldonado on time.

Today was primarily a travel day, so I began by taking a taxi to the Terminal Terestre to catch a bus to Puno. The bus station is a dizzying mele of chaos, and it was exactly what I was expecting. It took a while to find a bus to Puno, as some of the companies would list Puno as a destination on their signs, only to tell me "no PUNO." I finally found the bus I was looking for and paid my s/15 (about US$6) and paid my departure tax of s/1 and boarded the 7am bus to Puno.

This really was the locals' bus, even though it was a "fancy" motorcoach. The toilet was out of order and every seat was full -- as well as many laps. I had a window seat so I could put my pack on the floor under my legs and keep it secure for the seven hour trip. I listened to the iPod for most of the trip, but I did share my bananas with the lady in the next seat and her grandson. They gave me some of the bread they were carrying back to their village in the middle of nowhere.

Upon arriving in Puno, the skies opened up and the cold rain was mixed with hail and thunder. It didn't make Puno, already a fairly ugly and dirty place, any prettier. In fact, Puno had a sense of desperation about it, as though it wanted to escape but couldn't. I took a mototaxi to the hotel and had a siesta.

At 6 pm, I wandered out into the streets and found that the rain had washed away a lot of the dirt and trash from the streets, and the city was a little cheerier. I walked around a while and found the Plaza de Armas. A few blocks away was the main shopping district and I came across a restaurant that had been recommended in the Lonely Planet guide. IncaBar was good, but a little too touristy for me. The alpacca steak in wine sauce was good but I imagined that normal Puno residents were not having this for dinner.