After 9 hours on a small boat from Copacobana we reached Peru. We arrived in Puno like illegal immigrants. The boat engine and lights were turned off and we were guided in by sticks to not attract attention to us. We were then met by a tour guide who led us to the centre of Puno to get our passports stamped. Little did we know the city was blockaded due to protests! The Peruvians were protesting against a Canadian company who are buying land and mines that will eventually destroy the lake. The protests were everywhere and we were lead through them to immigration were we had to sneak in the back door to get our arrival stamp. The guide then took us to a hostel for the night telling us we would be able to get a bus out the next day.

All the while Angie was suffering with both altitude sickness a bug and was not well at all. The next morning we got a taxi (a guy riding a bike with chairs on it) to the bus station to find out it was shut for the foreseeable future and no taxis could take us out of the city as road blocks had been placed all over the city. We returned to the hostel and a lady said she may be able to get us a minibus from the outskirts of the city but this would involve many hours walking and was potentially dangerous as we were going past the ever more hostile crowds. A group of 14 of us met in the hostel and whilst trying to organise this one traveller somehow bumped in to the army general outside our hostel who was evacuating his family from the city and he offered to help us.

The protests had been mostly friendly but were not all and getting worse by the hour with more and more people arriving all the time the government were afraid of what could happen. We walked to the General´s house and (whilst we waited under armed guard) he managed to organise a big army truck that could drive us and the guards out. The truck went over the road blocks and off road when necessary with no problem and we arrived in the next town safely. We booked us bus tickets to Cusco as quick as possible and left the area that night. Unfortunately at the time of writing this there are still travellers stuck in Puno but hopefully they will all get out ok as we were very lucky to get out the way we did.