Day 83 - Travelling in style

Puno to Cusco

We walked the couple of blocks from our hostal to the end of our street at 7.30am to board our luxury train for the 10 hour trip to Cusco. The Andean Explorer is run by the same company that owns the Orient Express so we were looking to forward to being waited on while enjoying the scenery. The train was very luxurious, highly polished timber and brass fittings, huge wing backed chairs and a four person table just for the two of us.

We settled in with a coffee as the train got going, and an hour or so out of Puno we passed through the city of Juliaca, and right through the middle of the local market. K realised that she had seen a clip on the internet of this extraordinary market and couldn't believe she was actually going to travel through it. The market is set up on the railway tracks, not just either side! As the train approaches the locals grab some of their produce and pull up their canopies as the train passes with only an inch or two to spare. A lot of the produce they leave for the train to go over, and the minute the train passes they run back out putting up their awnings and spreading their goods back on the train tracks. We passed all sorts of goods, at one stage there were children sitting at school desks with books facing the tracks and just inches away from the side of the train. Click here for a video of what we saw.

The countryside was amazing, first with views of Lake Titicaca, then the mountains and valleys either side. Some of the villages were quite basic, with mud brick buildings and few fences as the livestock are either tethered or more commonly shepherded by the farmers and their children. They spend their days keeping the animals grazing in a group, they must have a lot of thinking time! Many homes appear unfinished, we were told that this is to avoid tax, as taxes are paid on completion.

Lunch was an hour long silver service three course meal which made the whole experience very incongruous with the passing landscape. Not long after lunch we arrived at La Raya, the highest point of the journey at 4319m and the only spot that we were allowed to leave the train, where there was a small market with a  heavy sales push at elevated prices (get it?).

The train had a great viewing carriage at the back, though it did get quite busy at times, as well as a bar carriage, and entertainment during the day. There was indigenous music and dancers (I think I've had enough of El Condor Paso to last me a lifetime), as well as a lesson in how to make a pisco sour, a drink we have come across repeatedly through South America.

When we finally pulled into Cusco it was getting dark, and we were almost run over in the car park while trying to find a taxi, it seems that 95% of the people on the train were part of organised tours and had transport waiting for them, the train staff didn't seem to consider that there were solo travellers on board who had to find their own way to their ultimate destination!