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After travelling by bus we finally arrived in Potosi which is at 4000ft we dumped the bags and went for a walk and dinner.

I had the infamous k’alapurka soup which is served with a Volcanic stone in the middle. Of course had to try the local beer.

After dinner Sophia, Brad and I went for Churros! They came with a yummy carmel type sauce that is very popular here.

Potsi is a mining town, back in the 1500’s they found silver and town went from 10k to 160k including locals, Spanish and slaves. Potsi means explosion.
Once the silver was empty, they found tin and they still mine tin today.

We went to see the Royal Mint House, they used to make the coins with 93% silver originally but then changed to 80% silver and 20% cooper. 1951 was then last coin in this mint

There was then a mineral collection and our favourite was the massive purple stone

There was also had mummy’s of children in the church that was within the mint.

Cosh got a coin stamped. The yellow building was the first mint house, but we were in the second one.

We then went up the view point which was a spiral staircase that was pitch black when you went past the window. The last picture is the silver/tin mine.

In the evening we had a cooking class with Flor to make empanadas and pizza and of course wine!

Today we ventured to the Dinosaur Park!! 🦕

We hopped on the bus, of which the head space was tiny on the second deck. We had to bend over to walk down lol

The first part of the park was seeing the model dinosaurs, these were to show the size and species of the dinosaurs they had found footprints for. This area was a limestone quarry but they found footprints and they were confirmed to be from dinosaurs, hence the park!

We then went down into the quarry.

In the evening, we went to a special Bolivian dinner, where everything was prepared with orangic local ingredients. We had 5 courses and drinks in between, really great experience.

Today after a very long bus ride we finally arrived in Secre. I like this town alot more than La Paz! We dump our bags and go for breakfast, followed by a quick walk which we then look around on our own afterwards.

Secre is known for chocolate we are told, so would have been rude not to try it..

They were so yummy! I had the rum and salt ones and they were gone pretty quick!

At the end of the day, we walked up the hill to have a drink and watch the sunset over the city.

Today we went for a tour of the cable cars, couldn’t believe how cheap it was. Especially as it was clean and efficient. For all 4 we went on it it was 9 Bovilan bobs, which is less than £1.

We then went back to our new favourite cafe and I had a Llamas burger, which was good!

After this we had a 12 hour bus to Sucre!

We left Puno on a day bus to travel across the border into Bolivia.

The process was interesting let’s say. We queued to get stamped out of Peru and then another queue to get stamped into Bolivia.

We had to take all our luggage off the bus and out it through the xray machine, but here’s where it falls down. We didn’t go through and machine or did they check what we had on our person. Next bit was a form we had filled out previously on an unsecure form, which generated a QR code, I would have assumed they scanned the QR code and check your name against your passport. Instead they took a photo of the QR code and then a photo of your passport. I did question our guide to what do they do if the forms wrong as they haven’t checked, do they come find you lol

La Paz is alot busier than the places we have been in Peru. We went to an English pub for dinner (was Andre’s choice not ours) and ended up doing karaoke again, which was great fun.

On our short walking tour when we arrived we went to the witchers Market, unlike Peru they are are big on magic here. Then freaky looking llamas you see above are in fact real! They burn sweet offerings to the gods, such as a sugar car if that is what the person wanted. The money here is beautiful!

Over half the group has gone to death road biking today (Saturday), so for the rest of us, it’s been a nice, easy day. Put laundry in, had a layin, late breakfast, and catching up on writing my blog. We welcome 5 new people into the group tonight, but sadly, we lose 3.

With leaving Puno comes the end of my time in Peru. I’ve really enjoyed it, got over the whole toilet situation which is good as most of the countries I’m going to will be the same. Our tour CEO Andre leaves us in La Paz. He has been great and especially for me with the Cusco stay he had to spend more time with me than the others!

My favourite was machu picchu, it was such an amazing place and the views and photos you’ve seen just don’t feel real. Proud of myself for Rainbow Mountain even with getting the horse it was an achievement.

The home stay is another favourite, to see how the families live and how they are happy with so little.

Been very lucky with my group, we have been 16 people. Other groups we have bumped into have been 4-8 and having more is better. We have people leave and join is when we get to La Paz.

Today we set out on Lake Titicaca, which I didn’t realise was massive!! Spending both Peru and Bolivia, it looked more like an ocean than a lake. From our hotel to boat we were picked up on bikes and we raced down to the lake shore.

Our first stop was the floating islands, there are 165 islands on the peru side alone. We stopped on an island and they explained how they built the island and how they live.

The islands have at least a 1m base of what looked like grass roots. They leave that for at least 3-6 months, so they start to fuse together. They will then at a 1m of reeds. They will invite 300 people to compress reeds from other islands. There are 24 people that live on the island we visited, all the same family.
They need to add a new layer of reeds once a month to maintain the island.

We then visited another island for lunch. There was a festival happening which we watched for a while. We had soup and trout for lunch before walking across the island to get back on the boat.

We then arrived to the island we were staying at with our mama and papas for the night.

The group played football (clearly I didn’t lol) we did got dressed up in the traditional clothing which included 3 skirts, jacket, belt, shawl, hat and a pom pom decorations.

The locals then showed us a dance, which we then copied them, only a shame it got so dark as we were doing it.

We then went back to our families house and they cooked us dinner. I was with Nick and Georgia, who were another g adventure group we paired up with. Not speaking Spanish or the local language did make interacting with them difficult but the food was fantastic, we gave them our gifts. We were advised to bring 3 things, I brought more than that (most of us did) I brought rice, pasta, spaghetti, sugar, porridge, popcorn, pineapple, marshmallows and oreos. I did have a big bag of sweets that I shared out with the kids that were at the football pitch earlier in the evening.

Georgia and myself shared a room, which was better than some of the hostels we had stayed at. We were told to be up for 7am to start breakfast.

For breakfast, we helped make a fried bread, which was yummy! We then helped with the pigs and their 8 piglets, which were so cute, the sheep and lambs, 1 hen and 2 donkey’s.

While Georgia and Nick went kayaking I helped prep the vegetables for lunch, peeling the potatoes, grating carrots and another vegetable I have never seen before and lastly chopping runner beans. After lunch we washed up and then it was time to say goodbye to our families and return to the boat.

On the way back a couple of the guys jumped off the boat into lake, which was freezing 🥶

In the evening back in Puno, we went for dinner with a show of traditional dances. Not as good as the one I went to in Lima, but you get what you pay for.

Today we got a day bus to puno, thankfully it was a good bus, big seats, plenty of space and cooler than the last couple we have had!

We were on the road for 8 hours, so once we arrived we chilled before dinner. I had been waiting for Puno to try guinea pig…

I think it tasted like rabbit, it was awkward to eat so not sure I’ll have it again, prefer the Alpaca.

Today was a nice chilled out day. We sorted laundry, we for brunch at Jack’s cafe and went to the market to finally buy some souvenirs. Got a bracelet, some little Llamas and some postcards, which I am yet to sort a pen out to write them.

In the evening we all did karaoke at the hostel, even got up and did a Whitney track!

Was so excited for Machu Picchu and it didn’t disappoint. The weather had cleared up and we had a lovely sunny day. Michael and me had a private tour guide, as we were going up we saw our group coming down from finishing their inka trek.

It was amazing to see one of the new wonders of the world!! Got some great photos and videos due to the fab tour guide we had.

During the invasion of the Spanish the inkas didn’t want them to find Machu Picchu so burnt the pathways and threw them off the scent.

Hiram Bingham expeditions in the early 1900s, he found Machu Picchu covered by a lot of the forest vegetation. This archaeological site is 75% orginal, on the tour we were shown photos from 1912 and 2004 and they did an amazing job with the restoration.

They think about 1000 people lived at Machu Picchu but would have been higher society. The terraces would have been for farming and they had the water supply from the river.