Djurdjevic - Personal Photos

26 Jun 2010

Updated Feb 17, 2010

Back in Peru for Annual Pilgrimage...

...this time, with Elizabeth

FROM PUNO, Jan 28 - Puno was the highest and the lowest point of our trip. The highest, because Lake Titicaca on whose shores Puno lies, is the highest lake in the world with an elevation of about 12,600 feet. The lowest, becaus

e we found Puno to be ugly and dirty compared to other places in Peru we had visited. The only other place that was uglier than Puno was its neighboring city, Juliaca, where the Puno airport is also located. These two cities lacked the pride that even the most modest places in Peru displayed. Most of the homes looked unloved. They were slapped together like boxes of bricks that nobody bothered to paint.

But as the Cunard ocean liners' slogan went way back when, "getting there if half the fun." Actually, getting to Puno was ALL the fun we had on this three-day sojourn. It was a 10-hour bus ride with many frequent stops during which an interesting and informative tour guide explained the sites to us in English and in Spanish. If you want to follow our ride geographically, you can click on the big detailed map on the right.

As we were leaving Cusco, there was still a lot of evidence of widespread flooding south of the city, along the banks of Vilcanota river, a tributary of Urubamba.

Our first stop was at Andahuaylillas, a charming colonial village, which boasts a church with many beautiful paintings from the Cusco School of Art, and a ceiling that is dubbed as "Cusco's Sistine Chapel." But an unsung highlight of our stopover were these two magnificent trees in the town square (far right and middle left), in whose shade these two old ladies chatted the morning away (middle right).

We passed through Urcos and several small lakes that lay by the side of the road, heading toward San Pedro and San Pablo (Peter and Paul - adjacent villages) near which the old Inca ruins of a Wirakocha temple lay at Racchi (which is actually in San Pedro).

What's left of the once magnificent temple to the Creator (Wirakocha or Kon-tiki Wirakocha, whose son the Inca believed was Sun, and the two daughters were Pachamama (Mother Earth) and Mama Quilla (Mother Moon), is still pretty impressive...

Of course, there was the inevitable market just outside the temple's walls. It seems the only creature that did not care about all this tourist hoopla was that cow that was laying next to a fresh water spring. It had everything it needed right there without having to haggle with or fend off insistent merchants.

We had to make one more stop at a tourist trap in San Pablo, where we both fed the Llama and Alpaca, and I actually bought something (pretty brass and bead wind chimes).

... I sauntered off to a corner of the shopping plaza where I spotted these unusually beautiful flowers. Neither of us has ever seen anything like it before.

We stopped for lunch at Sicuani, a crossroads town from where the highway to Arequipa runs (to the Pacific coas

t).

While occupants of two tour buses feasted on a buffet lunch, an Inca musical quartet entertained us.

Our next stop was at La Raya, which means The Line, because that's the boundary between Cusco and Puno regions. La Raya is a mountain pass which lies at a half-way point between Cusco and Puno and was the highest point of our journey at 14,300 feet.

As we were approaching La Raya, the scenery was starting to resemble the Scottish Highlands... barren land with sheep and llamas grazing here and there. In the distance, one could see the snowy peaks of the Chubaya mountains.

At La Raya, there was, of course, more shopping opportunities. This time, Elizabeth went to town and bought some souvenir gifts for her family back home. I also like that pair of fluffy white Alpaca slippers ("house shoes," as Elizabeth calls them), so I bought them for her as a memento of the highest point she had reached during our trip to Peru. As you can see from the shot on the right, she did not waste any time making use of them. And the high altitude did not bother her, either. She was so busy shopping she did not even stop to think about it... :-)

As we left La Raya and started our gradual descent toward Puno, a sun peaking behind the clouds in the distance created some wonderful mountain images. For the next several hours, however, the scenery did not change much. We traveled on a pretty much a level plateau at about 13,000 feet that was a barren and desolate as any part of the Scottish Highlands. In fact, the similarity was so striking that at any moment I expected to see some "Whiskey Trail" signs. :-) Alas, sheep, llama, and occasional mud huts was all we saw. Not even a "Pisco Trail" was in evidence.

Our next stop was at Pukara, an ancient Inca settlement which now houses a museum. But its claim to fame in Peru is that it is the home of Dos Torritos.

In Peru, the two little bulls are images as common as mud (middle left). Every house has them on its roof top. People believe that Dos Torritos will bring them good health, good luck and protection. The three shots on the right were taken inside the Pukara museum. At this point, we were about three quarters of the way from Cusco to Puno. I wished we had arrived. Up until now, the trip was quite interesting. After Pukara, however, I could not wait to get off the bus.

Still, we had to endure the long ride and the ugliness of Juliaca (left), a town that are tour guide said was a haven for drug dealers and smugglers from Bolivia. Finally, around 5:30PM, roughly 10 hours after leaving Cusco, we started to descend toward Puno and Lak Titicaca (the other three photos). From that distance, Puno was drab but not as ugly as you will see its close-ups reveal. But at that stage, we did not care about aesthetics. We just wanted to get off the bus and check into our hotel.

After we settled in and cleaned up a bit, we went for a walk around Puno. The rain was drizzling and was getting dark.

So the photos you are about to see are not of the best quality.

Still, you can discern some of the city center buildings as well as the main promenade, the Lima avenue (middle right above). The picture on the far right is that of the Black Christ, a statue outside the Puno cathedral. In Cusco, there is also such a monument inside the cathedral.

The church on the left (above, nighttime shot with three facade spires) is that of the Virgin de la Candelaria. There was a service in progress when we walked in, and the church was filled to the rafters. Evidently, a festival of the Virgin of Candelaria was beginning. If you click here, you can read about it in Spanish.

We had dinner at an nice Italian place on Lima avenue. I took a picture of it the following day (right). The food was good but we were one of only two tables that were occupied. By the end of the evening, we found out why. The restaurant had just opened the day before. :-)

And that's all she wrote from our bus trip from Cusco to Puno, and our first evening in Puno.