Puno Friday night.
\nThe flight was uneventful.\u00a0 We landed in Juliaca just fine.\u00a0 We had checked our bags and Marlo asks what is the worst that can happen by checking our bags.\u00a0 I am not thrilled with her mocking the universe like that, but the words were out.\u00a0 I am pretty sure she did not consider what the worst was.\u00a0 Fortunately for us the worst did not happen and our bags made it just fine.\u00a0 The only thing that happened is that there was a flight of grumpy people that arrived at the same time.\u00a0 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\u2026\u00a0 I hate to admit it but when the luggage fell off of that ladies cart in the parking lot I laughed :>
\nOur guide met us after luggage.\u00a0 We decided that for this next leg our guides would be named Julio.\u00a0 We wouldn\u2019t ya know it that WAS his name.\u00a0 We drove through the streets of another part of this half crumbling \/ half built of Peru.\u00a0 We saw lots of old women sitting in the fields doing something.\u00a0 They looked exactly like the Peruvian women in the movies!\u00a0 Big hat, wrap around poncho, the whole nine yards\u2026\u00a0\u00a0 I mentioned it to Marlo and she said that they did not used to dress like that UNTIL they watched the movies, what!???\u00a0 I thought it was hilarious.\u00a0 It could have been the altitude.\u00a0 We peaked out at 12,576 feet.\u00a0 The altitude had little effect on me.\u00a0 Marlo had taken something for it, but it ate her stomach so she stopped taking it.
\nWe had upgraded our hotel from the Casa Andina to the Casa Andina Private Collection.\u00a0 We drive up through Puno and even take a picture from the road with a llama.\u00a0 We get to the gates of the city and there is a check point.\u00a0 Well we don\u2019t make the check point.\u00a0 The policia ask our driver to get out of the car and walk out behind the car.\u00a0 At this time our guide mentions that the polica are corrupt and they may need to bribe them!\u00a0 I have seen this movie and it usually involves a unpleasant stay in non-luxurious accommodations.\u00a0 We sit quietly and wait.\u00a0 We are fully in a no joke zone.\u00a0 Our driver returns no worse for wear and Marlo makes some witty remark.\u00a0 I glare at her a bit as we move out of the no joke zone\u2026\u00a0 we make it fine.\u00a0 It turns out that our hotel is on the lake, actually on the bay.\u00a0 We cruise out of town and up a hill and I see this really nice fancy white building.\u00a0 I hopefully inquire if that is our hotel.\u00a0 He says no, this is yours\u2026\u00a0 he points to a brown building that is unimpressive.\u00a0 I thought that he was joking!!!\u00a0 It turns out that our hotel is very nice.\u00a0 We also visited the hotel that we would have stayed in before the upgrade.\u00a0 It was right in the middle of Puno and there was a Halloween festival going on.\u00a0\u00a0 We were glad to be out of town.\u00a0 And the bed was fabulous, great king-sized with wonderful linens.
\nWe had a lovely snack at the hotel restaurant and check things out.\u00a0 Later we go into the city to check that out.\u00a0 It was Halloween and the streets are packed with little munchkins begging for candy and crackers instead of sols.\u00a0 They were cute.
\nWe decide to grab dinner at one of the place that the hotel recommended.\u00a0 Not their other hotel either.\u00a0 We did find out that the lesser hotel was selling water and soda for half of what they were charging us\u2026\u00a0 what up with that???\u00a0 Also you can\u2019t drink the water in Peru.\u00a0 Fortunately they provided us 2 bottles of water.\u00a0 We drank them and asked for more.\u00a0 They said that we only get two\u2026 we end up getting a huge thing of water in Puno for half of what they wanted\u2026<\/p>\n
We sit to eat.\u00a0 They don\u2019t understand any English and we, well very little Spanish.\u00a0 We manage to get a nice meal.\u00a0 I had more alpaca.\u00a0 We wonder around some more and even found the lesser hotel, but it took us some time.\u00a0 We got the water and I got Maryanne’s post card.\u00a0 then it was time\u00a0 to go home.\u00a0 We successfully hailed a cab and were on our way.\u00a0 Again no English.\u00a0 Fortunately we had a map and just pointed.\u00a0 It took several attempts before he caught on\u2026
\nOff to sleep\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Puno Friday night. The flight was uneventful.\u00a0 We landed in Juliaca just fine.\u00a0 We had checked our bags and Marlo asks what is the worst that can happen by checking our bags.\u00a0 I am not thrilled with her mocking the universe like that, but the words were out.\u00a0 I am pretty sure she did not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7vq9N-13","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67,"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions\/67"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatup.brantct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}