Writings By Location| To Puno by Bus, "First Class" | 1 | 2 | 3 |
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| Pukara Museum |
Another hour and a half of driving brought us to our last sight, Pukara. Very little is known about this pre-Incan (and pre-Columbian) village high in the mountains, although it was populated as long ago as 1000 BC. The indigenous people of that time carved some amazing stonework, which resided in a museum at the base of the hill on which the site was perched. But what was most curious was where the village was located, when the Incans took it over. The Incans were very big on what we later termed "southern cross" (basically a fat plus sign, with right angles chopped out of each corner, to make 2-3 steps in each quadrant). It turns out that several of their important villages were located along a straight line, going exactly 45 degrees NW/SE. When plotted with other major settlements, it filled out the points of the southern cross...nearly 450 miles across. The fact that they even had compass directions was impressive, let alone how to tell which way was North. But laying out towns in such a perfect pattern hundreds of miles away from one another a thousand years before GPS systems was a mind-boggling concept.
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| Lake Titicaca and Puno |
We examined the sight, along with the museum, then hit the bus for the last leg of our journey, to Puno, on the banks of Lake Titicaca. We paused just outside the city to watch as dusk fell over the lake, then pulled into town just as it started to get dark.
Yet another small world incident: while waiting for our luggage to be unloaded, Erin exchanged a few words with a fellow American traveller from the bus...from Morristown, New Jersey — a stone's throw from where my parents live.
We got a transfer to our hotel, where we got to enjoy a queen-size bed for the first time in nearly a week. It's ironic that $30 in a tour agency goes so far, yet most $30 hotels in Peru insist on having only two rooms with one bed, and both are always taken when we get there. After unpacking a bit, we went strolling around the main square and a pedestrian walk to get some dinner at a very nice, albeit gringo-filled, place.
Thirty bucks on a bus may take you far, but you can never get away from the gringos. C'est la vie.
-- Keith
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