Off to Puno

My room, deep in the bowels of Marlon´s House in Arequipa is as quiet as a tomb. I arrived back in town a night early and my former room was unavailable. Marlon´s House is two colonial houses joined together; I was provided a room in the second house. The usual breakfast, three small loaves of bread with preserves and two fried eggs and a couple of cups of coffee. I settled my tab for 56 soles. A very cute young woman from Argentina convinced me that I must take a bike ride on the road of death when I get to La Paz. The road of death is world famous as the most dangerous road in the world. The 80 kilometer ride out of La Paz is almost exclusively downhill, so it is not a strenuous adventure; she assured me that if you are riding down you are almost always next to the cliff face and not on the side of the road that adjoins the precipice.

I hailed a cab, Rosario stepped out of the hotel and spoke with the driver, ensuring that I paid a fair fare, which was 4 soles. The bus terminal has a large number of companies that travel to Puno. I took the one with the earliest next bus. The one way fare is 15 soles for a six hour ride. The time on my itouch was fast by one hour; I have no idea how long it has been wrong.

As much as the hotel wanted to sell me a tour, I couldn´t for the life of me figure out what I would get out of it. Take a bus to Puno, catch a boat in the morning to one of the floating islands made of reeds, stay the night, transfer to another island for another night, return to Puno. What is the tour going to get me?

The tour of Machu Picchu was $64 more than just buying the tickets myself and I got less than nothing out of it. By that I mean that on arriving at Aguas Caliente I was met by a woman who handed me off to a man who handed me off to a woman who walked me 2 blocks to my hotel. On the way back, I didn´t have the voucher for the bus ride from Ollantaytambo to Cusco and was left stranded at the bus station by the driver. Another driver offered to take me into town for only 30 soles; I had but 20 and he accepted that. Full fare is 15 soles. Just another ripoff.