It is finally time for me to share with you adventures we will have via bus. There’s a neat setup down here called Peru Hop (Bolivia Hop) where you get four stops for about 80 usd. Depending on your final destination, your wristband will either say Peru Hop or Bolivia Hop. We got the cute green one for Bolivia, thankfully. You just hop on in a city on their list, then hop off. Explore that place and then tell them where you want to go next with 24 hour notice. Repeat until you are done.
That being said, let’s begin. We hopped on the bus headed for Puno around 07:30 and arrived at 14:30. However, once we arrived Mer was down for the count. All day she was in bed under like five blankets. While she was under the weather, I did not do too much. Thankfully we didn’t have a set date we had to leave, so I let her recover over the next few days while I did little things in the small town.
That first afternoon I just got some more cash out and a personal pizza for linner. I checked on Mer and then went to watch the Colombia futbol match with Nico. We met Nico on the Culca Canyon trek. He had been working in Puno doing field anthro research for a while. Although I believe he is back in California now. Hope it’s going well for him! When we went out to watch the game, we were unsuccessful, but we did see Peru v. Paraguay and Ecuador v. Argentina. The funny part was we got pizza again for dinner because the place Nico really wanted to go to was out of the two things he wanted us to get. The pizza ended up being so much better than the one I had earlier that day. Totally worth it. I would tell you the name, but I don’t know that it had one. It was just in a little alley between places with two walk up windows, a door, one table for two inside, and then the oven and prep area on the other side of it. Like a restaurant in a closet. The game was projected on the wall outside the windows. It was on the right side of the Catedral De Puno. Good luck finding it. Yellow walls.
The next day Mer said she felt up for a walk so we went on a long one to the lake, seeing the town along the way, and then got lunch at this place the hostel staff suggested. It was delish, but I accidentally ordered two lunches thinking one was an entrada. I couldn’t finish it all honeslty, but that’s okay. I got causa and hamburguesa (this one was like a chopped steak) and they were both tasty. The place was called Rupha Restaurant. Mer ate one quarter of her lunch, so it was safe to say she was still feeling bad. Poor kid. We had an island tour scheduled for the next day so we both hoped the rest would be enough to get her through.
The hostel employee I mentioned was so nice, beyond just suggesting a good place to eat. She helped me fix my snag in my sweater! Love her. The hostel was called Kantaya Hostel. That night for dinner we ended up going to the place Nico and I had attempted, Cafe Bar de la Casa del Corregidor. A mouthful. We got the trout “crudo” for lack of a better word. It was a giant plate of avocado and trout covered in a soy sauce type of liquid. Delicious but so filling. You have been warned.
Our last night in Puno we got dinner at Mojsa, where we both got roast beef and mashed potatoes. Accompanied by a hot wine that had pisco in it. I didn’t see it had pisco and was started by the first sip. Strong!
The only other thing we did was a tour of the Uros floating islands. I’ll write up a little something about that for you all to read after this ;).
This post is simply food recs, so I hope that isn’t too boring. With Mer sick, we kind of laid low here. Although I think the only thing we didn’t do was go view the city from the top of the hill, and see the Sillustani Tombs. They did sound fun and will get added to list of things to do on our next trip down here.
Will be in touch! Next stop, Bolivia 🙂
Madeline Daily 