Cusco to Puno

It was a long bus ride from Cusco to Puno, and I had the choice of doing a night or day trip, and I chose the day trip.

I did not take any photos as the windows on the bus although they started clean, quickly built up a film and would not have made for decent photography.

The area around Cusco is a fertile valley quickly giving way to rugged hills and mountains.  The slopes are covered in trees and grasses and a lot of the slopes, even some of the steep ones are broken to the plow.  The whole area seems packed with villages that slowly peter out as the elevation gets higher.

After being on the bus for hours, the villages stopped and the vegetation had changed, all of the trees had disappeared and very few shrubs were seen, and after a bit even the shrubs faded out.  The land was still used for pasture however, and sheep, alpaca and even a few cattle were being grazed with shepherds watching them closely.  There was the odd collection of farm buildings, but nothing really big enough to even call a hamlet for over and hour of travel.

From November to near March is the rainy season, and there was a come and go series of showers as we went higher.  The top of the pass has vegetation I have come to expect in the far north of Canada, similar to that around Tombstone Park in the Yukon.  A green blanket covered the ground gving way in spots to gravel, but rarely getting above ankle high.  At the top of the pass, the altitude was over 4,500 metres, pretty close to 15,000 feet.

The diesel engine on the bus had a happier tone when we finally started down.  We did not drop quickly, and after about half an hour of travel, the vegetation had gotten taller and thicker.  The valley we had been traveling through opened up gradually until it was obvious we were in the Altiplno, the high Andes plain that stretches between Peru and Bolivia.  From reading on this area, the largest segment of the economy is agriculture, followed by minerals and last, tourism.

The bus would its way slowly through the city of Juliaca, and I was less than impressed by it.  Compared to just about any other place in Peru, especially considering its size ( pop. 200,000+) it was a drab, colourless place with very few paved streets.  The amount of construction happening was large, and the people seemed quite used to dealing with thin mud everywhere, but it would be way down on my list of places to visit.

Puno itself is on the shore of lake Titicaca, and there is a steep drop between the plain and the city, leading up to a delta that runs to the lake.

Perhaps my impression of the area is also coloured by the climate.  For the most part it has been cloudy and cool, with a high temperature of about 16c and light winds.  As half my purpose in leaving Canada for the winter is finding warm places to be, this area of Peru is not my cup of tea.

My next post will feature some of the photos I took of the people who have chosen to live on floating islands in Lake Titicaca.

Bolivia is not far away, and as soon as I arrange my bus ticket I will be off.