The coca tea is served everywhere in Peru and Bolivia and sometimes in Ecuador and Chile. Also, one can buy the leaves the same way you buy green tea. They claim it´s good for those who experience sickeness due to high altitudes. After all, it´s a stimulant so it does pretty much the same job as the coffee. And it tastes very good with lemon!
Mate de coca
The border to Bolivia
The border to Bolivia looks crounded in the picture, but 95% of the people you can see are just selling something, so actually few people were in line at the border crossing office. However, because ¨no hay systema¨ (system down) we had to wait one hour until everything was restored.
Finally, the moment I´ve been waiting for so long, has arrived: we were in Bolivia!
Lake Titicaca
Once in Puno, we booked a tour of the Lake Titicaca. First we went to visit one of the artificial floating islands inhabited by the Uros, direct descendants of an ancient indian tribe. After a short stay, we continued to Taquile, another island some 2 hours away from the first. As you can see from the last picture, the indians living nowadays pay less attention to details, compared to their ancestors 🙂
Tags: watercraft
The high Andean plateaus
From Cusco we continued through the Andean plateaus on our way to Lake Titicaca. Except for the mountains, the land was so flat as if we were at sea level. Only the llamas were reminding us we were actually over 3500m above sea level. Along the route there was also the railway of the Andean Explorer (a 10 hours round trip from Cusco to Puno costs US$220 per person, so I´m wondering whether they have any customers at all…)
The canyon
Since we couldn´t see anything while travelling by train during night, we decided to take a 3 hour walk along the railway.
