Our receipt said that today we'd get a bus to Puno at 8.20am. Neither of us knew if that was the train time or the time we'd be picked up, but because we hadn't been given our tickets we decided to wait in the hotel. At 8.30 the nice hotel lady phoned the man who booked the itinerary, and he reassured us that someone would be there in 5 minutes. And, strangely enough, they were. The taxi driver had our flight tickets from Puno to Lima, and he picked up out bus tickets and put our luggage on the bus, so by 9.30 we were on our way. It took 6 hours to get to Puno, through miles and miles of grasslands and cornfields and tiny mud-hut villages, and we arrived at the bus station at 2.30. And, wonderfully, we were met at the station by a woman with Mikey's name on a piece of paper, which had long been one of my ambitions. She took us to the hotel, gave us our tickets for the tour tomorrow and we checked in and went for a late lunch.

Puno's been having a bit of trouble recently. The people of the town killed their mayor last week because they didn't like they way he was doing things, and they kidnapped someone else yesterday. Mikey and I are going to stay our of trouble for a while... What I did like though, was the photo of the mayor's dead body in the mortuary which was pinned to the wall of the town hall... you don't tend to see much of that in Bath.

We had a late lunch in an excellent restaurant recommended by the hotel and Mikey ordered alpaca. It was quite nice, quite chewy and gamey and a bit like a cross between veal and venison, but tougher. Not really something to look forward to though. We bought some water for tomorrow from two very excitable children and I've spent the last two hours writing this lot. The hotel is doing our washing for us and we're being picked up at 7.30 tomorrow morning. Puno is on the shore of Lake Titicaca and we have a tour out to there to see the reed islands and the local tribes. It's all very touristy, but we may as well see it as we've come this far.