Recovery in Cusco, continue to Bolivia..

So the last few days have been a recovery period for Greg and I. After the trek in MP, we stayed one extra night in Cusco. It was mostly just resting and eating. Greg went to the Machu Pichu museum, which was quite small apparently.The recreation, a small scale model of the the ruins was good I’m told.

We took the break time to get some laundry done. There were some socks with an alarming amount of odour attached to them. We opted to get it done in an all day place, to pick up around 9p that night….idiot tourist move!

We then later hooked up with some of the Intrepid group for dinner. it was a really nice place actually, I’ve forgotten the name though! I did grab a card. The set menu’s in Cusco are great, soup with main. Always yummy.

So after dinner, the laundromat place is closed! Uh oh! We were due to fly out the next day. We did eventually manage to get the owner to open up her door and she gave us all our clean clothes back! She lived just to the side of the shop.. in Cusco the doors are solid wood with huge locks. It looks like something out of the Labyrinth in places. I can only recommend not trying to do laundry when you are stupidly tired and not thinking rationally! We even got some extra clothing back, some pants a pair of man jocks and a g-string….awesome 😛

So, the next morning we flew from Cusco to Juliaca. Juliaca is like a transport hub town, but nothing much else. Taking the short flight meant we didn’t have to take a ten hour bus ride. The plane trip was less then an hour. We then sort of bus hopped our way to Bolivia.Juliaca to Puno, then Puno to Yonguyo. The last leg we took a local combi type transport, which only cost 8 soles each for a 3 hour drive…that’s like 2 or 3 AUD. The scenery was very pretty as you spent most of it driving around Lake Titticaca.

We got to the border between Peru and Bolivia, changed our Soles to Bols and grabbed a taxi to Copacabana. We got to our Hostel and basically relaxed! We went and had lunch by the water and returned to the room to just chill and enjoy the view. Despite recently having been quite high in the world, the altitude here (over 3800m) still makes it a huff and puff event to climb stairs..of which there are always plenty!

The hostal we are staying at is amazing. It’s very artistic. Our room is round, the bed is round! There are huge windows facing out over the lake. I will attempt to put photos up eventually!

Copacabana is basically a little fishing/tourist village. It’s very quiet in the middle of the week, contains a few churches and museums.Although this time of year locals from all over come to get their cars blessed. We could do a few hikes if we were feeling inclined, but at this stage it’s not looking likely. Greg has a sore throat and we are hugging the room for a bit.

We did go down to the main area for breakfast and a wander. I bought some vegies and pasta – we are going to attempt to cook tonight, as this place comes with a little kitchen. It’s also very cold at night and last night we didn’t even have dinner.

The ladies selling me their vegies were laughing at us. I was paying quite high prices for only a little amount of food (I am guessing). I only had 1 Bol coins, one lady insisted I keep taking more of her broad beans to get the value… (they are gigantic!). Hopefully, a vegie pasta will do the trick tonight.

This afternoon we need to book a bus ticket to La Paz, which is four hours away and start to get ready for our next little adventure in the Amazon Basin.

 Later…

Bus ticket booked, hooray!

We wandered around town for a bit, then had lunch down by the water, I had a egg battered trout with mash and veg and Greg had trout with chili, rice and veg. There is a lot of trout on the menu 😉 It is quite yummy! There was a stray dog giving me such mournful looks the whole time I was eating. There are so many dogs around. They are either splayed out on the ground, soaking up the sun, or seemingly on a mission to be somewhere. They are all pretty darn cute. There a few stray cats around too, but they are quite teeny. We saw a ginger tabby today that looked very similar to Nila when she was little and before she expanded 😉

I tried to do a few sunset shots of the lake and gave HDR a go. They are looking quite pretty and I am going to do this more in the future!

Currently almost finished cooking dinner, the little electric stove is slowly getting us there!