We were meant to be picked up by the tourist bus from where we were watching the condors, for a bus to Chivay and then connect to another bus for Puno. Unfortunately the bus broke down that day, but we did not know, so were stranded at Cruz del Condor, without much time to get to our connection. Luckily we managed to get a collectivo to Chivay.
We made it to Chivay with 5 minutes to spare, we rushed to the bus station in a mototaxi, only to find out that we needed to get the bus from the Plaza in town, so we jumped onto another mototaxi. It was quite stressful, as I like a buffer.
We stopped at different sights along the way to Puno, the joys of a tourist bus.
The scenery on the antiplano was beautiful, but dusty.
One of the main reasons you stay in Puno is to visit the islands of Lake Titicaca on the Peru side, the lake is divided between Peru and Bolivia, they both say that it is 60/40 Peru/Bolivia or the other way depending where you are. There is no real border on the lake.
The floating reed islands, Islas Uros, are something amazing and do what they say on the box. Floating and made of reeds.
The women still dress very traditionally where big is beautiful. They have pom poms at the end of their long plaits, where if you are single the pom poms are big and colourful and if you are married they are small and plain.
They also have boats made of reeds, but more for tourists.
View from the lake back to Puno. These are the reeds that they make the islands from.
Selfie from our reed boat adventure. It was pushed by a motor boat, which wasn’t very traditional.
