Marian Johns' Journal of the Desert
Explorers trip to Peru in 2002
Images by John Page unless otherwise noted
Day 8,
September 11, Wednesday
Arequipa to Puno See Map
Sept.11, Wednesday – Today is the one-year anniversary of the World Trade Center disaster. Don’t know what’s happening at home, but haven’t heard of anything extraordinary. Chuck and Lorene were not feeling well this morning.
Yesterday, coming down from the altiplano on the paved road to Arequipa, I noticed a loud howl in the truck I was driving. This morning, the men crawled under it and determined the rear U-joint was shot. Kathy called National Car Rental in Lima, and they eventually contacted a local mechanic. He came, inspected the U-joint, and agreed that there was indeed a problem that needed to be fixed before we went on. So, it was decided that four people, (Chuck, Kathy, John Hunt, and Reda) would stay in Arequipa until it was repaired while the rest of us went on to Puno and Lake Titicaca.
Before heading up to Puno, we
spent the morning there in Arequipa, and walked down to the central plaza,
passing the Santa Catalina Monastery (convent) on the way. The entrance
fee is $7 US – a bit much, so I passed it up. I wasn’t too interested
anyway.
After stocking up on soles from an ATM at one of the banks, we went to see Juanita, the 500 year old, so-called “Ice Maiden” and another frozen mummy who were human sacrificial victims found in 1996 on the high peaks near here. “Perfect”, high-status, young women and boys were sacrificed by the Incas to appease the gods who were associated with the high mountains. These mummies are kept frozen in atmospheric-controlled display cases. This was not on the itinerary, but should have been – well worth the short time it took.
After lunch – mine was a
chicken sandwich and an avocado/tomato plate – we left for Puno, taking
the two good trucks, 
and leaving the Mazda and
its riders. Our route took
us back the way we had come into town yesterday. This is a different route
from the road we took years ago which followed the base of El Misti, the
conical-shaped volcano that hovers over Arequipa. The new, paved highway
may be longer, but it’s much faster. Back up on the altiplano, we passed
a lake and saw flamingos along the shore line. Unfortunately, they were so
far away, they only appeared to be tiny specks.
By the time we got to Juliaca, it was dark. I was in need of a baño, but none was available. On and on we drove, eventually reaching Puno. That’s when the “fun” started. The directions we’d been given were confusing, and we found ourselves in the chaos of tiny, narrow streets barely wide enough to squeeze through, with vendors and shoppers everywhere. I was amazed at all the nighttime activity going on. Because of the congestion, traffic was stopped more than it moved. We asked a policeman for directions, and he kindly got in one of our trucks to take us. But he took us back the way we had just been. Actually, we didn’t realize it, but he was trying to find the hotel owner, which he eventually managed to do. Then he got out, she got in, and off we went to the hotel. Turns out, we were supposed to go to her other hotel (she owns two) which wasn’t the one where we had made reservations. Somehow, we got shuffled over to the second hotel, unbeknownst to us.
Once we arrived, I had to make an emergency beeline for a baño and then took some Imodium-Advanced. What a relief! I didn’t dare go to dinner though, for fear of a sudden urge, so Lorene brought me a ham sandwich from the restaurant where they ate. The hotel is a funky place, but our room has a nice bathroom and beds. However, the carpeting is rather strange. It looks like it was torn out of another place and put in here with unfinished seams in sort of a patchwork fashion. Dug out my hot water bottle as Puno is cold – not too surprising since it’s located at about 12,700 ft. elevation. There was a little portable radiator in our room and we had it going full-blast.
