Rick Rambles – A blog

Someone asked if we were having a good time or was it a pain…  It is a great time and a wild adventure.  Things are not always easy or exactly right, but we expected that.  We also knew that the language would be tough.   All that said, a great time!

We are packing up, had a lovely breakfast and talked to some women from Chicago.  We have met lots of nice people…

We are flying to Lima for 2:40 and have a 9:40 flight to Santiago.  Where is that private jet, where is that TRANSPORTER.  whomever said that the journey is the reward did not have to sit in Lima Airport for 5 hours…  we will make due and I will catchup on all of the blogs..

peace out..

Puno Friday night.
The flight was uneventful.  We landed in Juliaca just fine.  We had checked our bags and Marlo asks what is the worst that can happen by checking our bags.  I am not thrilled with her mocking the universe like that, but the words were out.  I am pretty sure she did not consider what the worst was.  Fortunately for us the worst did not happen and our bags made it just fine.  The only thing that happened is that there was a flight of grumpy people that arrived at the same time.  One woman refused to move her luggage card and another one was yelling at women in the ladies room asking if they were taking a shower in there…  I hate to admit it but when the luggage fell off of that ladies cart in the parking lot I laughed :>
Our guide met us after luggage.  We decided that for this next leg our guides would be named Julio.  We wouldn’t ya know it that WAS his name.  We drove through the streets of another part of this half crumbling / half built of Peru.  We saw lots of old women sitting in the fields doing something.  They looked exactly like the Peruvian women in the movies!  Big hat, wrap around poncho, the whole nine yards…   I mentioned it to Marlo and she said that they did not used to dress like that UNTIL they watched the movies, what!???  I thought it was hilarious.  It could have been the altitude.  We peaked out at 12,576 feet.  The altitude had little effect on me.  Marlo had taken something for it, but it ate her stomach so she stopped taking it.
We had upgraded our hotel from the Casa Andina to the Casa Andina Private Collection.  We drive up through Puno and even take a picture from the road with a llama.  We get to the gates of the city and there is a check point.  Well we don’t make the check point.  The policia ask our driver to get out of the car and walk out behind the car.  At this time our guide mentions that the polica are corrupt and they may need to bribe them!  I have seen this movie and it usually involves a unpleasant stay in non-luxurious accommodations.  We sit quietly and wait.  We are fully in a no joke zone.  Our driver returns no worse for wear and Marlo makes some witty remark.  I glare at her a bit as we move out of the no joke zone…  we make it fine.  It turns out that our hotel is on the lake, actually on the bay.  We cruise out of town and up a hill and I see this really nice fancy white building.  I hopefully inquire if that is our hotel.  He says no, this is yours…  he points to a brown building that is unimpressive.  I thought that he was joking!!!  It turns out that our hotel is very nice.  We also visited the hotel that we would have stayed in before the upgrade.  It was right in the middle of Puno and there was a Halloween festival going on.   We were glad to be out of town.  And the bed was fabulous, great king-sized with wonderful linens.
We had a lovely snack at the hotel restaurant and check things out.  Later we go into the city to check that out.  It was Halloween and the streets are packed with little munchkins begging for candy and crackers instead of sols.  They were cute.
We decide to grab dinner at one of the place that the hotel recommended.  Not their other hotel either.  We did find out that the lesser hotel was selling water and soda for half of what they were charging us…  what up with that???  Also you can’t drink the water in Peru.  Fortunately they provided us 2 bottles of water.  We drank them and asked for more.  They said that we only get two… we end up getting a huge thing of water in Puno for half of what they wanted…

We sit to eat.  They don’t understand any English and we, well very little Spanish.  We manage to get a nice meal.  I had more alpaca.  We wonder around some more and even found the lesser hotel, but it took us some time.  We got the water and I got Maryanne’s post card.  then it was time  to go home.  We successfully hailed a cab and were on our way.  Again no English.  Fortunately we had a map and just pointed.  It took several attempts before he caught on…
Off to sleep…

The pictures from the trip are linked off of:

http://www.brantct.com

Well they told us to be ready at 6:15 for our boating island adventure… We got up at o’dark early again… and we actually had a nice breakfast together.  Our ever so on the ball tour people (Condor Travel) failed to tell us where to meet them.  I assumed the lobby and Marlo thought the boat at the end of our dock would be the place.  We split up in hopes of tracking them down.  I found her in the lobby.  She was dealing with another couple about a lunch issue…  That did not add to my confidence level.  I told her several time who we were.  You have to understand that sometimes I am Mr. Marlo and sometimes Marlo is Herrick Rick, so I threw all the names at  her.  She was a bit confused.  She then asked one of the scary questions…  “who was your guide yesterday”  did ya hear it, the familiar sound of the ball hitting the ground, bounce, bounce…  followed by the oh we so sorry… why are you here at 6:15 she asks.  I calmly reply because you told us to…  oh no she says, you should be here at 7:15.  She recommends that we walk s l o w l y down the dock to the boat.  Well the dock is only 100 feet (or 30 meters) or so.  I calculate the SLOWEST that we can walk down the dock and figure we will go back to the room and mourn the sleep that was deprived by… them…  We are not detoured or even worried about it.  Just one more thing…  oh yea, Puno is right out of the third-world pictures.
We were driving here in our comfy mini van..  please hold, i have a request… might  be a while…
I’m back…
We get on the boat a few minute late.  We cruise out to the reed islands.  These are islands made of reeds.  They cut chunks of wee roots and dry them out for the floats.  They said the islands last 20 years.  Newly weds can make a new island and be on their own.  The islands actually undulate was the boats go by.  We are learning all about the people and the islands and the lake.  The guide asks us how deep we think the lake is where the islands are.  I guess 8 meters.  A couple of other people guess.  And guess what, I am right.  I win a really cheap necklace.  Yahoo!!
One couple had some camera troubles so I take some pictures for them and now they have a link to the pictures.  We also me some Irish and some Australians.  Marlo and I go poking around and find the solar cell with bare leads and a dead duck.  We go back to the group.  There is also a guinea pig that we get a picture of.
Then Ruben (our guide, not Julio) asks if we want a reed raft ride, of course we jump on in.  We have a nice little 5 minute ride and start to return to the island.  Well, island man come over and demands 10 sols per person!!!  This was a shock to everyone.  We think that they  funded the island for a month with our payments… I suggested that we all dance with Ruben and charge him 3 sols, but instead I just tell him that was crap.
We are off to Taquile island.  A three-hour-tour. I explain the 50-50 rule to our new friends.  Ruben is nice enough to demonstrate.  There are apparently several ways to get to the top of this island. There are THE 600 stairs.  There is a ramp up and then there are stairs and a ramp down.  We wanted to up the stairs and down the ramp.   Ruben was not being clear.  We finally get it all straightened out.  It seems like ruben was trying to talk us out of the stairs.  They were supposed to be strenuous.  They were not bad at all.  We went across the island on a trail.  It turns out that we stopped in a store and never saw the correct trail again….
More later…

To change a PIN.
So here we were.  We had just landed in Lima, Peru.  My first time in a third-world country.  And what do you think one of the first things I did?  I lost my debit card.  It was clearly not my fault…  Marlo had used her card to get cash and I might have given a piece of bad advice so that instead of getting Sols that would be useful in the country that we were currently occupying she ended up with more US $’s.  ooops.  So she decided that I should use my card to get the sols.  No problem.  During this discussion we had a chat with and English chap about the exchange rate.  We knew what the Chilean peso was at but neither of us had a clue about the sol (2.9/$).  So I put my card in, got 150 sols and left my debit card right there and walked away…  no clue how I spaced so badly.  Worse then that it took me two days to figure out that I had lost it.  Fortunately one smart thing that I did do was copy all of the card numbers and contact numbers if I did have an issue.  I cancelled it and had a new card issues (in the us) easily.  No help to me here in peru, but no one had used the card and it was fine.  I was just not happy about being stupid.
This bring us to part two of the sage.  I still had my wonderful visa signature card.  That was the good news.  The bad news is that I did not know the PIN.  Setting the PIN was on my list of things to do before I left…  I did not make it to that item…  I did not know the pin.  No worries I thought, I have this wonderful signature service.  I called them up and told them of my dilemma.   This call mind you was from my cell phone.  I believe that the rate for that call was around $2/min… America…  so being on hold is even less fun then when it not $2/min…  the first call was ok.  She asked me my card number, yes, the one I type in the first time they asked, gave her all the information in the world, and she said she would send me to the automated system to set the pin.  I thought I was set… not.  The automated system spit me back out to another customer service rep.  I proceeded through THE SAME dance and she connected me to the automated system…  the THIRD rep was even more help.  At this point I was somewhat agitated.  We were sitting in the airport waiting to board a plane and I figured that I could get this done.  She told me that there was no way to do this because I was not calling from my home phone.  WELL I had changed my number to my cell and it turns out that it takes 30 days for that to be valid for a PIN change.   I could not get my pin set.  Game over…
Now the really good part…  she asks me if there was anything ELSE she could do for me, what?!?!?!?  I very nicely told her that she didn’t do anything for me in the FIRST PLACE so she SHOULD ask me if there is anything that she can ACTUALLY help me with.  The answer was no…
The moral of the story is this… make sure all that pin business is set before you leave home.  ALSO, one additional little tidbit…  if your PIN on your debit card is over four digits, it may not work in foreign countries.  Try it BEFORE you really need it!  Yes, Lauren this means you :>

The 50/50 rule:

I have come to the conclusion that whatever question that we ask people here; they seem to understand about half of what we ask and in turn we understand about half of what they answer. It take a good four times around a question to get even close to any useful information… if you have two people it sometimes makes it faster… sometimes not.

We are here.  the hotel  is very nice.  It is actually on Puno Bay of the Lake, but still very nice.  Pictures are being uploaded.  We have good interne!

Next up the 50-50  rule…

We are leaving the hotel for the airport.  One more plane.  an hour flight.  I sugessted that we check the bags because Marlo’s is getting even larger.  She thinks its a good idea.   The she askes, “what’s the worst that can happen?!?!??!”  doh!!!  I guess we will see…  off we go