July 20, 2012
After another hearty breakfast with Virginia, she drove us to Arequipa's bus station and we boarded a public bus to Puno. During the journey of five hours we saw plenty of llamas and alpacas and vicunas (although no guanacos, the fourth type of camelid found in Peru).
There were no dire movies to endure on this journey, although we stopped numerous times for various merchants to board the bus and hawk their goods. One chap was attempting to sell (rather unsuccessfully) various kinds of natural remedies from the jungle and he remained on the bus blathering on and on for more than an hour. He only stopped once we reached Puno, 3830 m (12600 feet) above sea level on the shore of Lake Titicaca. We checked into Hostal Pukara, where I had a bit of a lie down (to ease the effects of the altitude) while Tanya went out and about to research our options for touring the lake.