Lake Titicaca: Hello, Peru.

**Anna linked the link to the wrong link the other day. Shes fixed it now and its working good as gold, here

Before we get carried away, Ben wanted to put up more photos than Anna would let him. They compromised and more photos can be seen here

Anna on the never-before-seen bike lane leaving La Paz.

Greatest. Day. Ever.

After a great few days in La Paz being tourists and getting our bikes serviced for the first time on the trip we reluctantly prepared to leave. The reluctance was perhaps mostly due to the fact that the city sits at the bottom of a 500m deep canyon with only one road in, meaning the same road out only horribly uphill. So on the advice of the guys from Gravity (who serviced our bikes) we got a taxi to the top of the hill with our bikes on the roof and bags in the boot. Anna forgot to take her drinkbottles off her bike and one flew off down the motorway at significant speed, the driver saw and Ben ran back along the motorway to collect it before some truck squashed it (its not like any vehicle would swerve to miss it, they ain't those types of drivers over here). It now sports an attractive dent but is otherwise unharmed.

Oh, and none of this happened until late morning as we had a sensational breakfast at Angelo Colonial in town. Ben had the American breakfast with a huge plate of eggs and bacon and coffee and juice and Anna had the Andean breakfast, which included quinoa pancakes, quinoa porridge, bread and jam, fruit salad and a freshly squeezed fruit juice. So we were too full to do anything for a while, and Ben had to post something at the post office, always a debacle that takes longer than intended.

We assembled our stuff again next to a street food stall at the top of the motoway and began cycling through El Alto, the megacity at the top of the canyon. This city is a bit out of control but our taxi driver gave us some directions to get out of town (of which we understood about 10% - something about straight and left) which combined with astute guessing got us on the right track and we settled down for a cheap lunch in the panel beating district on the edge of town. It was a family owned place and while we obviously stood out like sore thumbs they were very nice and even gave us a discount on the already cheap meal. We tried some Quina Kola, the local coke alternative, it was possibly even sweeter and more sickly than the original. Our bikes sat safely outside completely out of our sight watched by a couple of mechanics having their lunch. There was a few conversations along the lines of "well we don't see too many of them folk 'round these parts.." around the bikes, they are quite the attraction.

Yup, clocking up those 4000 metre passes like nobodys business these days.

Our first view of Lake Titacaca from the pass.

Anna doesn't like this photo because her helmet is on crooked and her arm looks funny.
Her objections were overruled.

Another bonus part of the day was the most welcome tail wind that picked up after lunch and the gentle downhill, both of which were gratefully recieved as we didn't really start cycling until after 1pm and had a good 70kms to cover that day. We covered almost half of it chatting away about where we wanted to flat upon our return to Auckland and what features would be essential. Conversation stopped when we reached a short but steep hill and from there it was a wizzy downhill and accross the plain to the town of Tiwanku, famous for its pre-incan ruins. We checked into a small hostal with barky dogs and Andean themed rooms and had a cena at the only local place we could find that served food. Cena, like almuerzo usually means you'll get whatever you're given, its both a stress-free and stress-full way of eating. But in this case we had our vegetable soup with a piece of meat in it and our meat-and-rice-and potato main couse, grabbed some chocolate crackers from the shop and was done with it.

Ben with that "I had a tailwind all afternoon" smile.

Our bikes at our flash digs in Tiwanku.
Seriously, inside was very nice.
Food in this town: not so nice.

The next morning we had very questionable meat burgers for breakfast and spent the morning wandering around the ruins. We cheaped out and didn't hire a guide so we can't off much in the way of explanation of what we were looking at, but it was fun and we found a man selling nice jelly and lemon froth things on the way out. This hardly stopped us scoffing down lunch 10 minutes later (fried trout from the lake, a local specialty) before we set off for the Peruvian border well after lunch, again.

Ruins.

Anna, conqueror of the wall.

Portrait of an ancient local.

Ben with a jelly-and-lemon-frothy-top treat at Tiwanku. We found these quite the taste sensation in Bolivia.

Cycling sucked due to a headwind and we didn't reach the border town until quite late in the day. The border between Bolivia and Peru cut right through two places we wanted to visit so our first foray into Peru would only last about 70kms before we cut back accross to Copacabana in Bolivia. Ben recieved a parting gift from Bolivia that night in the form of a tummy bug from one of the many questionable food choices we had made that day so we holed up in a cheap hostal over what sounded like a basketball court or some other type of gymasium for the night. The next morning Ben still wasn't feeling 100% so we crossed the border and hopped on a local collectivo that took us to the other border in about half an hour where we went through the whole rigmarole of passport control again. We think we spent more time filling in immigration forms than we did in the country of Peru, not to mention confusing the officials with four passport stamps all dated the same day before lunchtime.

What could well be the first informative road sign we have seen in Bolivia.
Bad luck if you were aiming for Argentina.

Ben being welcomed to Peru along with guys carrying bricks on their bikes. This is the first time we have seen people with bikes heavier and more ridiculous than ours. Anna though we should swap our bikes for one of theirs and she could sit in the front with the bags while Ben rode. The idea didn't fly.

It was only 8kms from the border to the tourist town of Copacabana, possibly the Queenstown of Bolivia? a tourist town at any rate, famous for being the hop off point to Isla del Sol, the birthplace of the sun according to Inca legend. Its right on Lake Titicaca in a pretty little bay filled with mostly tourist boats. We checked in for a couple of days of recovery, visiting the island, hiking in the surrounding hills and eating non-Bolivian food like nachos before going back to Peru, this time for serious.

Us and Copacabana. Peru in the background.



 

Isla del Sol.



Ben and donkeys, Isla del Sol.

Carrying on our recent trend of not actually cycling until the afternoon we rolled up to a major junction in the road blindly hoping there would be food there. There was, but not exactly what we had in mind: 3 women, each with big pots covered in towels and a table and some chairs. We plonked the bikes down and wandered blankly up to them "pollo" "queso" "locro" were their sales pitches. Well after recent sickness we weren't going anywhere near chicken, and what the hell type of meal is cheese so we went with locro, the meat stew with the rice and boiled potato. Meanwhile our bikes had attracted quite the fan club, well, Bens map had anyway with a group of men eagerly working out where we were on the map.



Ben with local map and bike enthuiasts, obscure road junction, Peru.



We carried cycling around the lake for the next few days, stopping over in the town of Juli which will forever be remembered as the home of the worst hotel room ever and for eating dinner at 4:30pm and going to bed at 5pm. Apart from that minor blip the scenery was fantastic, the second day in Peru happened to be the presidential elections unbeknown to us so everywhere was super busy. We have noticed that Peruvians seem much less shy than Bolivians, children have frequently been running out of houses to say hello to us, often in english which is both unnerving and awesome.

Lakeside fields on the way to Puno.

Cycling into Puno, population 100,000. Gravel.
What the?

Floating Islands. So cool.

Photo taken from a structually questionable viewing platform. At least if the whole thing collapsed the spongy reeds would break your fall.

Boat, of reeds.

We have spent a day in the city of Puno resting and going to visit floating islands made of reeds out on the lake which was really interesting. Many people live on them permanently and we have seen many bundles of reeds stacked drying around the shore in recent days.