Puno, Peru

6th September – 7th September 2017

We had another early start, but not as early as the previous day when me and Katie went to Rainbow Mountain – I got up at 5.45. Lay in bed, I felt like my ankle was much better but as soon as I got out of bed and the blood of went down, the pain came back. I got dressed and went to breakfast.

I didn’t eat much for breakfast because I was too tired but I had some fruit with yogurt and a hot chocolate.

After breakfast, I went and got my things together and went to reception. We were meeting at 6.45 ready to be collected at 7. We had to be collected by mini buses again because the truck wasn’t allowed down the road where the hotel was. We put our bags on the buses and drove up to El Tipon ruins.

We drove for about an hour before we arrived at the ruins. When we got there, there was a tour of the ruins but because of my swollen ankle, I could only wear flip flops so I stayed at the bottom. I wasn’t bothered because I didn’t feel 100% and we have seen loads of ruins recently. The tour lasted about an hour so a few of us just sat and chatted.

We got back on the bus at about 9 and drove down into the town of Tipon to meet David and Amber. We loaded the bags up and Rianne gave the new people a tour of the truck (new people started before the trek and others left after it). We set off around 9.30 and head towards Puno. After Rianne had done a tour of the inside, we were given new amigos: mine is Jack and Katie and Sabrina were paired up, which may not necessarily work because we’re always together anyway, so could all end up missing. Although there were a few jobs that needed doing, we didn’t do a job list because it was only 5 days until this trip leg would be over, so there wasn’t much point.

We were driving for about an hour before, all of a sudden, the brakes slammed on and we came to a halt. David and Rianne hopped out and had a look at the brakes but they couldn’t seem to find the problem. Luckily we weren’t too far from Cusco, so David was able to ring the office to ask for help – it was a bit worrying to say that Amber had been in the workshop for a week. David carried on looking for the problem while he waited and eventually the mechanics arrived.

Just over two hours after we had stopped, they found the problem! Some piece of equipment had expanded and broken, making the truck brake hard. We had a spare one but there was part of the broken bit stuck inside the wheel which they couldn’t get out. Rianne showed us the broken one and what one should look like – it was worrying to see. It was also a worry that they had looked at this particular part while it was in the workshop but Rianne didn’t know if the broken one was new or not in the workshop – I’m hoping it wasn’t.

Two and a half hours after Amber broke down, another truck, Rosita, arrived to rescue us. Rianne had to quickly clean her (which was annoying because she had spent the week in Cusco cleaning Amber to make her spotless for us). We had to clear literally everything out of Amber and move it all over to Rosita, who was no where near as nice or big, so it was a disappointment!

Over three hours after Amber broke down (at nearly 2 o’clock), we carried on towards Puno in Rosita, hoping that Amber would be fixed and returned to us soon. We had a change in seats because the layout is different in Rosita, so I was at the back where I couldn’t put my foot up, so it didn’t help the swelling.

At around 3.15, we stopped off in the place where we were going to have lunch, for a proper break. We had half an hour before we got back on the truck with 240km to go.

On the way, just before it went dark, the rain started to come down and as soon as the sun went down, we could see the lightning hitting nearby fields.

We stopped again just after 6 and as we got back on, Rianne said we had 100km to go so we were aiming for 9 o’clock because it was so dark and rainy. The update on Amber was that there were then 5 mechanics, a grinder and a generator and they had only just got the broken piece of bearing out – she was not in a good shape. Once she had been fixed, Darren, who brought Rosita to us, was going to drive her to Puno for us and take Rosita back – it was going to be a long night for him. Me and Sabrina had started watching a film on her phone before the toilet stop, so watched the rest of that, which passed some time but it was still only 7 when that finished.

We arrived at the hotel in Puno at 8.45. We were assigned our rooms (I was with Amanda, who just joined in Cusco and did the classic Inka route, so I didn’t know much about her) and then Rianne gave us a run down of the evening and morning plans. If we wanted to go out for dinner, it was a taxi ride away because everything near was shut, so most people stayed in and just ate snacks for dinner.

I got a relatively early night, once I had sorted myself out.

I should have been able to lie in, in Puno, because I wasn’t going on the optional boat trip to the floating islands; I decided not to go because I needed to have a rest and Rianne said it’s quite set up for tourists and Char said that she saw them in Cambodia where they weren’t set up, so I have time to see them then. The lie in wasn’t possible though because breakfast was only served between 6.30 and 7.30, so if I wanted feeding, I had to be up. Breakfast wasn’t exactly exciting either: it was just bread with jam and butter. Darren was at breakfast though, so that meant Amber was fixed and had been returned!

After breakfast, we had until 10 to get ready, pack an overnight bag and chill before the others got back from their tour. I decided to use my time to try and catch up on organising my photos before we left. I also took a quick trip to the market for some lunch and snacks; I didn’t want to be stranded without food if we broke down again.

Puno was a shorter stop than planned due to the breakdown but there didn’t seem to be much around anyway, so it wasn’t too bad. Next it’s time to cross the next border into Bolivia.

To travel is to live, Katie x