Peru Rail

After seeing Cusco, Machu Picchu, and all the surroundings, I wanted to visit the place that gave us endless chuckles in 8th grade world geography class: Lake Titicaca. Even though I was in Peru, I learned my lesson from the last Bolivian chicken-n-goat bus back in 2004 ($8usd to go a few hundred kilometers for 12 hours on non-paved roads in EXTREMELY overcrowded conditions), so I opted to go in style this time... first class on PeruRail from Cusco to Puno. It was well worth it!

Especially after meeting some Canadians on a lake tour that took the 7 hour bus ride and told me that it was an incredibly hideous experience. Anyway, as you can see the interior of the train was quite luxurious... maybe not "Orient Express" luxurious, but pretty nice nonetheless.

The price tag also included lunch and various snacks, cocaine tea (OK, technically COCA LEAF tea), miscellaneous entertainment, music, and other assorted and amusing things that a chicken-n-goat bus does not offer. Plus the views throughout the trip were incredible!

Who knew that Peru was such a pretty place? I always envisioned Peru as mostly being jungle... as seen in the Indiana Jones movies or something. Plus maybe just the dusty, polluted, crime-infested city of Lima on the coast. But the 230-some-odd mile journey southeast from Cusco to Lake Titicaca was not at all like any of that. Mountains galore, llamas and alpacas plus sheep and their shepherds (like to the left), and the occasional river or stream that the train crossed over.

One really nice thing about the train was that the very last car was the "observation car". Over to the right is what the observation car looked like... I should have been holding a glass of 20 year old scotch for a stylish look, but it wasn't included in the price of the train ticket and I wasn't shelling out $5 bucks for it. Oh yes, everything on the train was priced in US dollars so I can only imagine what a spectacular profit margin PeruRail is operating with.

Anyway, this was also where the entertainment provided by PeruRail was. It was all very canned but probably based on SOMETHING authentic. Vaugely. Sorta. I'm still not quite sure what the rooster-joker dancing with the female-devil was supposed to mean, but I think I was more amused to watch them in the middle of all the tourists and their cameras. There was also a fashion show of some sort, I'm not quite sure what the purpose of it was... probably to sell the clothes to the tourists or something.

Then there was some kind of ancient, sacred, Incan/Quechuan indian ceremony on display... right in the middle of all the tourists. The leaves being used are coca leaves -- also known as the source of cocaine! When you're in Peru and Bolivia, the coca leaves are everywhere.

Supposedly you chew them to alleviate the effects of altitude sickness... or maybe the buzz just makes you forget about it? The coca tea is the most popular way to consume it... next to rolled up $100 dollar bills off a mirror in Los Angeles, of course. You can also buy Lipton-tea-like coca tea bags to take home, but it would probably land you a latex-gloved cavity search in the back room of customs when you arrived in the USA.

So the ten hours to the town of Puno on Lake Titicaca flew by incredibly fast. Throughout the trip I think the train maxed out at about 13,500 - 14,000 feet of altitude through one of the passes in the Andes before arriving in Puno which was at 12,600 or so. I'm glad I was already acclimated to the air by then... there were some people not looking "real good" on the trip. Next time I'll post some pictures of Lake Titicaca, the floating (straw) islands of Uros, and whatever else I can find of interest.