El gran viaje 2007

So Sergio and I have finally made it to the heart of Peru-- Cusco. We crossed the border two days ago after a final stint in Bolivia on Lake Titicaca.

Copacabana is a quiet, sleepy (okay, it´s just boring) place, in a beautiful location right on Lake Titicaca. We spent two days there, which was plenty of time to walk around the main street and visit Copa´s cathedral (which looks remarkably like a mosque, by the way). We saw the blessing of the cars, a ritual that takes place most days in front of the cathedral where people drive their new cars up to have them splashed with holy water and alcohol and adorned with tassled banners declaring faith to the Virgin of Copacabana. We also ate a lot of trout, the local specialty.

We spent one night on the Isla del Sol in a super-fancy (well, for us) eco-lodge--a kind of birthday present for Sergio. We wanted to take advantage of our comfy lodgings, so we did a few short walks around the island and mostly just looked at the beautiful view from our cabin´s window. We also managed to see yet another festival-- they seem to happen everyday around here, and they almost always involve loud marching bands. The island was gorgeous, and although there were plenty of tourists they seemed to keep to just a few corners and mostly life continued as usual-- animals grazing, people harvesting quinoa, and of course the marching bands.

After Copa we crossed the border into Peru, which was pretty staightforward except that Sergio and I overstayed our Bolivian tourist visas by one day (oops) and had to pay a little fine. By noon on Thursday we were in Puno, on the Peruvian side of the lake.

Puno was not the greatest introduction to Peru, and our hotel was pretty dingy so we were happy to quickly see the Islas Flotantes on a packaged tour on Thursday afternoon and then hop on the bus for Cusco on Friday morning. The Islas Flotantes (Floating Islands) were an amazing sight-- man-made of reeds and hundreds of years old (the reeds are constantly replenished) by the Uros people. We even got to ride on an extremely crowded reed boat between islands.

We decided to skip the regular overnight bus and took a luxury tour bus to Cusco that stopped at different sights along the way. It was a nice way to see some of the ruins and towns between Puno and Cusco that otherwise would be a pain to get to. The highlight was the colonial church in Andahuaylillas, which had obviously Islamic details but also incorporated Andean religious symbols like corn stalks and the sun-- an odd mix to find up in the mountains of Peru.

It´s nice to be in Cusco after being in a series of tiny one-road towns, and we plan to hang out here for as long as it´s interesting before heading to Arequipa. We´ve pretty much abandoned our plans to stay here for Inti Raymi, a huge festival that will take place next week, because we´re ready to move on and because we´ve seen soooo many festivals already (in fact, today we got to see the tail end of Corpus Christi here in Cusco-- with plenty of marching bands).