AlternateRoute

Most of today was spent in transit on a bus between Cusoc and Puno. We had only two stops in a six and a half hour bus ride. The first stop was at La Raya Pass which is 4,321 metres and the highest point we have been to so far. There is not much there except some toliets (50 centimos) and locals selling “shit with llamas on it”. The 50c gives you a few piece of toilet paper and the man comes with a bucket of water to flush for you when you are finished. In most South American countries the sewer can only handle things that you have eaten first, so toilet paper is put in the bin next to the toilet.

Our next step was Juliaca, just to drop off some passengers. The town is a dump, but we have to return here to catch a plane to Lima. The bus broke down just outside Juliaca. Well not so much broke down, but one of the engine pipes got a hole in it. A little bandage seemed to fix it.

Soon we were in Puno, which is a bit of a dump of a city. It is on the shores of Lake Titicaca which is the highest navigable lake in the world. The town has a lot of unfinished houses. They mostly have one storey with a few support columns and reinforcing steel sticking out of the top. This is apparently because the owneers don’t pay taxes (land tax and rates presumably) until the house is complete. As a result the place looks totally crap. This applies to many Peruvian cities we have seen.

The electricity has been introduced to some of the small villages we have come through and some people have electricty before their house. There is a small wall about 1m wide and 2m high with an electricty meter in it and nothing else. It looks really weird. The other two things I have noticed is that there are dogs everywhere. In Incan culture, when you die, your spirit is blind and needs to cross the river into the spirit world. To do this you are guided by a dog, hence it is good to have dogs around.
The other thing is that there are many political symbols written on the walls of buildings all over the place. When you vote you put a cross through the symbol of the political party. There is something that looks like a broom, a cauldron, a llama, a corn cob, a fist with flowers and the head of an Inca. The sides of the buildings and fences are covered with these symbols as well as the names of the candidates. I am not sure if this is a healthy sign of democracy or not. I am hoping it is.

We had a short walk of the town followed by a dinner which included Guinea Pig and Alpaca. Tomorrow we visit the islands of Lake Titicaca.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 1459 and is filed under South America 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.