From Copacabana to Puno in Peru

Lazy morning in the hostel – we enjoy our room until it’s time to check out. A little before lunch we set out to explore and find the two Inca remains that are within the city. The first one is a couple of block away and as we approach – we realized it’s closed. The second one is two blocks further and we keep going. It’s going up, and pretty steep until we find a signage and indicate up again. It’s the astronomical point of the Inca ( or something like that ). We continue through the streets until we arrive at the bottom of a long staircase. We start the staircase up until both of us feel like… this is not what we wanted for this morning; we wanted easy visits. Alexis gets his phone up and check what the site looks like to see if it’s worth going up on a steep boulder for what looks like 300m of elevation uphill battle. It’s three standing rocks… 

We looked at each other and just decided that we were not in the mood for that. We backtracked to the hostel, we had some leftover from the restaurant we went to the day before. We fixed ourselves a simple lunch and proceeded to further do nothing on the couches of the hostel.

The afternoon went by fairly quickly and we made our way to hotel Gloria to catch our Peru hop bus there. 

The border to Peru is barely 20min away from Copacabana. We first queued up to the Bolivia side for the stamp, then customs before walking the 5min no-man lands until Peru.
Same story in Peru minus the customs. Then on-board the bus again to Puno. We have a further 2h30 hours of transport. We are a little grumpy and irritable during this ride. I don’t know why because we have not done much during the day. 

A French family with young kids were in our section of the bus, right behind us. I know I am going to sound like a grumpy old woman, but they were fairly noisy. The parents were getting the kids to do some homework and because you understand the language, you can’t tune them out and rest. Our minds couldn’t rest. 

We arrive tired and angry in Puno. Luckily, the hostel I picked was exceptionally nice and got us back to our good mindset. The welcome lady was super helpful and spoke perfectly French, our room was simple and comfortable. We enquire about diner, it was 8pm-ish by the time we arrived and from the bus we saw a lot of closed shops. She said just two blocks away was the main plaza and a lot of restaurants where open until 9h30 pm.  Great !

We walked these quiet streets until we round a corner and then a flurry of activities welcomed us. I was extremely surprised! The main plaza of Puno is really cute and has a lot of well-preserved colonial buildings and from there, a lot of pedestrian streets start which are filled with shops, restaurants and café. It is Friday night; everything is in full swing. 

We walked along a few streets to look for our options and decide that we are a little bit tired of potatoes. ( Potatoes are considered a vegetables in Latin America, it’s Rice/Pasta AND potatoes plus meat in most dishes ). We find our first Peruvian/Japanese fusion restaurant and decide to give that a try. An excellent choice ! Yes a little pricier than if we had done street food or a roasted chicken with potatoes but delicious.

To finish on a good note for this day was great. We go back to the hostel and a well-deserved sleep.