To Puno and the top of the World (in Peru!)
The Inka Express is a bus transfer from Cusco to Puno specifically designed for tourists. It is a 10 hour trip that is broken up into segments by stops at interesting sites and a stop for lunch.
Stops included a magnificently decorated church (that had a mass in progress which ended in a procession outside), an Inca ruin quite unique in design, a small museum with a preserved mummy, and a brief stop at the highest point of the trip at 4,400m.
We drove from the mountains to the high plateau, a barren, almost desolate landscape with little human habitation. It was starkly beautiful. Just before Puno, we passed through the town of Juliaca, where we couldn't help but notice the garbage on the roadside and the mass of ugly unfinished brick boxes meant someday to be homes.
The town of Puno itself has nothing particularly appealing about it (except our hotel--one of the nicer ones of our trip) but it was the jumping off point to the "Floating Islands" of Uros, and two other islands we were to visit as part of a 2day, 1 night cultural tour of Lake Titicaca.
