Slow Train to Puno

After spending a night in Cusco we caught the Andean Explorer train to Puno, on the shores of Lake Titicaca. This is a first class service with wood-paneled carriages which takes ten (yes, ten) hours to cover just 300 miles. There is an open viewing platform and bar in the last carriage with various forms of entertainment to pass the time.

I´ve always loved trains!

The scenery starts with the urban sprawl of the outskirts of Cusco where dogs chase up and down the side of the train. Apparently they are all owned by families but the Peruvians don't feed them so they have to go out to forage for food among the garbage.

Before long we were into rural areas where the steep sided valleys are filled with cornfields and villages with mud brick houses. Friendly looking people wave at the train including a guy standing knee deep in a river brandishing a large fish he had just caught as if it was the FA Cup. Every now and again a larger more prosperous looking town appears. My assessment of relative wealth is based mainly on the quality of football facilities which range from old goalposts on wasteland to smart little municipal stadia complete with grass pitch, cinder track and seating for a couple of hundred people.

As the journey wears on the track climbs to its highest point at 4320m where we stopped for the first time among snow covered mountains. It is too high for growing corn so the locals keep alpaca and llama, cows, sheep, pigs and donkeys and of course sell woolen garments to train travellers who get off for ten minutes. It is clear that people do actually wear this stuff in their daily lives in rural Peru - not just to have photos taken with tourists - but we suspect that when people get home with their jumpers, ponchos and hats with woven pictures of llamas all over them, they won't be wearing them to the pub.

Su meets the locals...

Beyond the mountains the train descends onto the high plain where the scenery becomes rather featureless. The second stop at Juliaca could not have been more of a contrast to the first. The guide book describes it as like a large, down-at-heel, desert bound work-camp. I wouldn't disagree. You can buy just about anything at the street market which the train passes through at walking pace.  Fruit, vegetables and books lie between the rails so that when the train comes the traders and customers stand back for a minute or two before resuming. The town has a Wild West feel and we weren't encouraged to get out this time.

The most curious sight was earlier on when two grey haired european looking blokes with cameras appeared just as I was trying to take a picture of a local village scene.  Bizarrely a little later the same two appeared again.  All told we saw them four times, standing next to their red 4x4 vehicle taking photos of our train.  The car presumably goes quite a bit faster than the train, enabling determined trainspotters to get lots of shots in different backgrounds. We have seen many exotic new things on this trip but trainspotting is unmistakably British.