The bus journey from Cusco to Puno was absolutey fine but took about 7 hours in total. There was an older American guy on board who really pee´d Casson off, the conversation went a little bit like this:

American Bozo: Where abouts are you guys from?

Casson: The UK

American Bozo: Yes but where from? You guys speak weird, you don´t speak the Queens English do you?

Casson: We all have regional accents, it´s still English

American Bozo: Yes but where abouts in the UK do people speak the Queens English and why do you speak funny?

At this point we changed the subject as otherwise we would have ended up being rude, I´m surprised he didn´t ask us if we knew the queen! When we got to Puno we weren´t massive fans of it so we decided to stay for 2 nights, just long enough to do the Uros Floating Islands and Taquille. It´s basically a border town with Bolivia so there´s not much going on.

We feel like we´ve been shafted quite a lot money wise since being here, especially as both our Spanish is really poor, well when we say shafted we probably mean we pay an extra couple of quid then everyone else for things but it´s the principle. With this in mind we decided to walk to the port to book a tour direct with a company rather than going through an agency to try and save a bit of money. When we got there this really nice old man came up to us and introduced himself and said he was a Captain of a boat and asked if we wanted to do the tour with him, we were so impressed that this old dude could speak english that we went with him to book the tour, at 30 soles each it was only about £7.50 each, bargain! That was until he added on park fees and various bits and bobs and it ended up being more like £12.50 each. Now we know that this isn´t a lot of money but it´s the principle that we´d tried to book it direct. It turns out he wasn´t a captain after all and he was just a tout!!!!!!!! Note to both us, don´t get suckered in by nice old men!

Anyway we went to the Uros floating islands the next day, they´re basically islands made completely of reeds, the island itself and also the houses on the island. They were pretty cool to see but we both thought that it was a set up for tourists, people definitely lived like this years ago as they built the islands to escape war and to be self sufficient but the badly hidden speed boat made us think that the people on the island probably just come for the day to work.

After Uros we went to Taquille which is a really lovely island, what we didn´t realise was that it was another massive trek, we thought it would be a nice stroll around the isalnd, no such luck we went up and over! We have both never walked as much in our lives!

On our last night in Puno we stumbled across a Fiesta, the South Americans love to party! There were bands, parades, fireworks the lot, it was really good to see. Whilst we were watching we spotted a cocktail bar so we treated ourselves to a couple of Mojioto´s and Pineapple Daquirri´s.

General Points:

1) Casson left his favourite cap at home so he had to buy one in Cusco as it´s pretty hot here when the sun is out, it´s disgusting and doesn´t even fit him, it perches on the top of his head, you will probably have seen this on the pics. I keep asking him to get another but he says it has fond memories now as it went on the inca trail with him. I will keep trying to get rid of it

2) The traffic noise in Puno is unbelievable, cars, trucks, buses, honk their horns and rev their engines at all times of the night and day. It´s unbearable at times, being woke up at 3am in the morning by a bus just revving it´s engine outside your window is not good

3) Being woke up at 4am in the morning by what can only be described as what sounded like a disco in the room was also not fun, there was a taxi parked outside our hostel, music full blast, doors open! Casson wasn´t impressed at all, I rolled over and went back to sleep

Next stop Copacabana in Bolivia .....