On The Road

Lima - Trujillo, 9 hours of bus, 486 km, sea level

Trujillo - Lima, 10 hours of bus, 486 km, sea level

Lima - Puno, 25 hours of bus, 1290 km, from 0m to 3800m above sea level

Puno - Copacabana, about 4 hours trip, two mini vans, 143 km, same altitude

Copacabana - Isla del Sol, 2 hours of boat, km, same altitude.

   After a few calm days in Lima, we take a night bus to Trujillo, or more exactly to the small town of Huanchaco along of the Pacific ocean.

We arrive at one of the worse hostel ever, which is quite expensive in comparison with the services. We leave Laura, who is sick, sleeping all day long and we go, Maxime and I, in search for a new hostel for the rest of the week. And there we meet Isabelle in the street, a woman from Quebec who holds a hostel with the lowest prices ever seen, on the other side of town. The place is filled with french people kind of hippies, super calm and really cheap (3€ a night for a feminine four beds dorm!).

So we move there the next day. Maxime and Laura only stay a few more days before setting off to prettier beaches in the north of Peru, and I chill there a full week between the beach and the visits of impressive ruins of Chimiu and Moche civilizations.

                           A wall in the Chimiu city of Chan Chan

                 A peinted and sculpted wall in a Moche piramid of the Moche god

   I'm off on the Monday to Lima. Ten hours of bus and the next night Coldplay's concert in the Peruvian national stadium. I spend my day chilling in Lima, have a cheap lunch in a tiny restaurant sitting at the same table as Magnolia, an old Peruvian lady with whom I talk for the time of my meal. It's also this Peru, when all the table of a restaurant are taken, you go sit in front of the ones who are alone at their tables!

After going to cuddle a bit with the cats in the cat's park at the center of Miraflores (the neighborhood where my hostel is), I leave for the concert where I meet a Peruvian brother and sister. They are full of energy, as is the public which is mostly Peruvian but also Bolivian for a big part. The "ola" are going on for a while one after the other, and each time a staff guy appears on stage he is being clapped by the whole stadium.

I go home sharing a cab with my two new friends and after a short night, it is already time to leave. Peru is over for me, I have to be at noon at the bus station for my bus to Puno.

Let's talk about that bus. After the one to Cusco that had had a three hours delay because of a wheel to change, this one is stopping every other hour to check its front wheel, to finally change it the next morning and giving us ... a three hours delay again! But the trip is nice, really beautiful and five of the other passengers around me were also at the concert, including one from Arequipa and a couple from Tupiza, on the other side of Bolivia, who came only for the concert, doing four days of bus ride back and forth, complaining to never have any artist coming to La Paz.

That night in the bus was absolutely beautiful. We were on the road at the end of the desert, before the beginning of the mountains, with loads of turns, which enabled me to start my night with the head literally in the stars: at each turn I could see the other side of the sky. The Peruvian roads are never lit, there was almost no moon, I felt like in a planetarium but even more comfortable.

                               The village council on the Isla del Sol 

   With the delay I arrive in Puno at 2:10pm. The last straight bus to Copacabana was at 2:00... I really don't want to spend one night in Puno so I go to the other terminal of the city to do the trip like the locals: first a small combi to the border about two hours and a half away. I am not very lucky and get in last so I can only sit in the back by a man who really wasn't decided on sharing any bits of his space, a woman with a big coat on and another one with a baby on her lap. Let's say that it was warm, that I had just about 0% of possibility to move my legs, and just about 10% for my arms, and that two hours and a half is a very long time after twenty five hours in a bus. Once at the border city, I try and use the public bathroom, a full adventure! My big backpack doesn't fit in with me, so I have to figure out a way to hold it through the closed door, at the same time using the toilet with my small backpack on my front, all of it in very dirty toilets...

Once the toilet mission over, I take a cab to the border, which costs one sole only and is filled up up to the trunk, as usual. I pass the border walking, and once on the other side I take another combi but way cheaper as it is Bolivian, with way more space and only for half an hour. The night is falling, I am exhausted and dreaming of a shower and a bed.

As soon as I arrive, I go to the first hotel in sight, for 50BO (6,5€ !) I have a real hotel room (not of very high standing obviously, but still!).

The next day I take all my stuff, go look around town for a wifi around the harbor (this is Bolivian, wifi isn't the most common thing...), and then take the boat to the Isla del Sol at 1:30 pm. There is a two hours boat ride to the north of the island and I meet two nice Chilean guys on the boat. Arriving we find a hostel for 25BO (once again I have an individual room with a big bed and a view on the lake). The north of the island is very pretty, there is a small beach where the kids bath, the cows as well actually. Pigs, donkeys and cats are a bit everywhere. We arrived there at the time of the town's council, where all the inhabitants meet, and talk in Aymara, the region's language.

Apart from that, there is absolutely nothing to do on the island, but there is no noise whatsoever and definitely nothing more relaxing. 

                           The beach of the northern part of the Isla del Sol

   I leave back to Copacabana the next day at 1pm, and spend one night there. It is awfully cold to the point that I go under my covers fully clothed with on top a second sweater, a hat and a scarf. All days are absolutely beautiful around the Titicaca lake, but all nights are rainy, windy, super cold, with thunder storm and even sometimes with hail, and even sometimes with hail that passes through the roof on the top of the reception of the hotel!

The next morning I wake up pretty early, take over the cold to go under a nice and warm shower and go get a bus to La Paz where I intend on spending one night only.