June 27: Cusco - Puno

June 27
My Birthday. The Andean Explorer (the PeruRail train from Cusco to Puno) departed at 8am for the long 10-hour trip south to the shores of Lake Titicaca. The train trip offers great vistas of the altiplano. The altiplano is just what the name in Spanish signifies: a high plain. At this time of year- the dry winter - the skies are clear, the air bone dry, the land parched, with scrub and grasses the only vegetation you see. The high, snow-capped Andes surround the huge expanses of open space. The terrain is in contrast to the much more verdant Sacred Valley outside Cusco.

The train stopped for only ten minutes at La Raya, the highest point on the Cusco-Puno route at just over 14,000 feet. La Raya consists of a small church and marketplace near the railway- no more. Vendors have their crafts on display and are ready to make deals during the short visit there. The photo of Jim was taken at La Raya.

You can get up and move from car to car on the train. The club car in the rear has dome windows for viewing the scenery and an open area at the very back of the train for enjoying the fresh air and for watching the altiplano as you make your way to Juliaca (the only other stop en route) and finally to Puno.

Darkness had set in by the time we arrived in Puno. A cab took us directly to our hotel, the Casa Andina Private Collection. This hotel was the most modern and American-style of any we had stayed in so far, with TV, phone, heat you could regulate, a restaurant, bar, and large staff. By the time we arrived there I was suffering from my second bout of soroche, though not nearly as bad as the first one in Cusco. After a light dinner in the hotel restaurant and a little more shopping at a small tortora reed kiosk set up outside the hotel by the shores of the lake (a freezing night!), we turned in early. We had to rise at 5:30 the next morning for our departure to the floating islands, Isla Taquille, and Isla Suasi.