Puno bound

We’re keen to see Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world and so once again call upon the Orient Express/Peru Rail 10 hour train to Puno. Personally, I’d rather have taken the (much cheaper) 6 hour bus journey, but being the subservient little woman that I am…I’m on the train.

It’s much more Orient Express-like than I’d imagined with free-standing armchairs and lamps on the table and the only downside is that we’re in a carriage with about 20 Australian sixty-something year olds, one of whom can’t stop telling anyone who will listen that her and her husband can only spend 10% of their wealth, which may be why they’re paying about £7,500 each for a 21-day tour.

Actually, the train journey was great fun. Not only were we served pisco sours at 10.30am (which we managed to snag 2 of by hiding our first ones under the table!) but I got talking to a girl from Chester called Laura and we had a real giggle together, especially once the fashion show was on. There’s nothing quite like seeing your waiter stripping off and changing into an alpaca jumper before prancing down the carriage to give me a fit of the giggles. The rear carriage was the bar where local bands played their wind pipes, drum and guitars whilst serenading us with traditional Andean folk music. The very back part of the carriage was open so that you felt as though you were standing on the back of the train.

Great scenery of mud houses, traditionally dressed women tending their flocks of alpacas or sheep and winding rivers gave way to some brown, barren scenes punctuated only by the train track running straight through the middle of it. But at least we had a three-course lunch and afternoon tea to distract us. And I had Laura to chat to whilst Will was on kiddie watch.

Almost at Puno, we pass through the town of Juliaca where a market spreads itself out across the train tracks. Books, fruit and car parts are literally set out across the tracks and, as the train comes through, it simply passes straight over the top of them. Seconds later, people step back onto the track and continue with their day. Luckily for them that this train only passes through once a day I guess.