Puno, Peru - Entering the Altiplano

High Plains Drifters
Just six hours of sleep separated our Macchu Picchu outing from a bus ride out of Cusco to Puno, Peru.  We are entering the top of the Altiplano, the "high plain", the widest part of the Andes and the second highest plain in the world, outside of Tibet.  On average, it's over 12,000 feet above sea level and spans Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.  Rain from the eastern and western Andes collects in the plain, and with no outlet, feeds lake Titicaca in the north and evaporates to leave behind the large salt flats of Uyuni in the south.  We are on our way to see both, we'll be spending close to a week traversing the Altiplano.

No complaints about the bus, it was as fancy as any we've ridden in South America.  It was like flying in a plane, with a separate luggage check-in, reclining leather seats, meal service and a personal tv for each passenger.  It was not a particularly long ride, about 6 hours.  We were climbing 1,000 feet to Puno, which is on the western shore of Lake Titicaca, at 12,600 feet above sea level.

I spent most of the ride listening to the radio and staring out the window.  The Altiplano is the birthplace of the Inca and it's hard to imagine being born into tougher circumstances.  It's a dry, semi-lifeless desert with only 3/4 of the oxygen required for lucidity.  Once the sun rises over the endless wall of volcanoes, the temperature can go from 30 to 80 in a matter of hours.  The farmers are optimistic, however, as many had recently turned over their dusty carpet of parched soil, readying it for planting.  The people who live here must be remarkable - they certainly took advantage of the speed bumps in the road.  Every time the bus slowed to crawl over one, a handful were there to sell drinks or homemade cheese or some other snack.  Our bus driver was a fan, he seemingly bought something every ten miles.

As we drove along it became harder and harder to imagine we were headed towards a lake.  There was no water of any sort for hours.  Titicaca is vast - 32,000 square miles ringed by 800 miles of shoreline.  It's as if every molecule of water was being horded there.

As we got closer, life began to pick up.  This is called Peruvian feather grass and from a distance it looks like a golden carpet.  When I first saw the aqua blue edge of Titcaca, it was otherworldly.  The change in color was striking.

Puno is a small city on the western of edge of Titicaca.  It favors Cusco in some ways, but is decidedly poorer.  This is where we got off the bus, however we weren't done yet, we had a couple more modes of transportation to go.

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