Puno

A rest day! We awoke to a spectacular view of Lake Titicaca from our hotel window, had a leisurely breakfast and then did a gentle circuit of the Hotel grounds, coming across a host of guinea pigs and a skittish flock of llamas as we did, as well as a few more memorable variations on that lakeside view. Afterwards we got a cab into Puno, to the Plaza Mayor, where we visited the Cathedral, a slightly weird coca and costumes museum and a very nice café, where we fortified ourselves with empanadas and Andean tea. After that we made the slightly unfortunate decision to climb up to the mirador above the city with a big statue of a condor. There were several steep streets and then about a million steps in two vast flights – there was actually a road in between the two where we saw other people getting dropped off by taxi and then having the temerity to make hard going of their own, frankly, truncated version of the ascent! Possibly this was not the best cure for our altitude sickness! A nice view though… Back at the hotel, neither of us particularly hungry, we split a pizza in the bar and had an early night…