track our trek

after our brief detour into bolivia, having been able to obtain no more substantial information about the strike situation in peru, we decided to brave the trip...in any case we'd come across enough other tourists with varying stories, none of which indicated the trip might be dangerous. so after our day trip to isla del sol, we booked a bus ticket from copacabana to cusco. we chose the early bus, in hopes that we'd arrive at a decent evening hour in cusco.
we gathered along with all the other backpackers early saturday morning to fill out our immigration forms and get our seat assignments on the bus. turns out the bus to puno, the peruvian town on lake titicaca where all buses to cusco make a pit stop, was terribly overbooked. with no seats left on the comfy big bus, we, the overflow travellers started piling into two tiny minivans for the 3 1/2 hour trip to puno. we handed our packs up to be tied on top of the vans and squeezed in with knees up to our chins amidst a great deal of confusion and worry that we'd have to make the entire 12 hour trip in those cramped quarters. the border was a short 10 minutes away, where we disembarked, got our stamps to exit bolivia, and carried our backpacks 200 meters to the peruvian border post to get our peru entrance stamps. then we loaded our packs on a different tiny minivan, this one more cramped than the first, for the 3 hour trip around the south of lake titcaca to puno. the company was good and the scenery was beautiful, so we made it to puno not much worse for the wear. we had a two hour wait there until the departure of the big bus for cusco, so we had lunch, picked up some snacks for the road and enjoyed the warm sunshine. thankfully, the rest of the trip went smoothly, and we arrived in cusco at 8:30pm without incident...no sign of strikers, demonstrators, or protesters...phew! welcome to peru! so far, so good...