1st February La Paz – Puno 149 miles

Finally we leave La Paz and continue our journey North. We leave La Paz in damp thinking about rain conditions, but once we clear the City gates the traffic disappears and the weather improves.
A reasonably uneventful journey with long straight roads and then a few wiggles and then repeat. We reach Lake Titicaca and run alongside it for a little while and then we move further away for some time.
We cross a couple of Police control points where we are waved through and their main concern seems to be checking the lorries. At one of these points we pass through there are scores of lorries parked up on both sides of the road and then we come to a barrier across the road with the same amount of lorries on the other side parked up, it is the border crossing. After a few conversations with the lorry drivers we establish there is another crossing for tourists which is in the town. We backtrack and work our way through the town, no signposts, but as we stop at a junction the locals all point in the direction we are supposed to be going. Finally two signs right across the road, thanks for visiting Bolivia and welcome to Peru.
We sort immigration out OK and the go to customs to sort the bikes, it is now 2 o’clock but we have gained an hour as Peru is 1 hour further behind, 5 hours behind the UK. We soon lost that hour because it is lunchtime, come back at 2, we change some money and have lunch and then return.
This is where we lost another hour, a very friendly customs officer but not sure if he had booked a bike through before. He invited us behind the desk to help him input, I have to say a mammoth amount of information. So we are advising him what to put down and in some cases tapping it into the computer ourselves, mine took 25 minutes and we thought Martin’s may be quicker but the screen of info disappeared about 3 times so it worked out the same.
Three o’clock and we are in Peru officially and on our way, not going to get as far as we had hoped but hey ho.
Lake Titicaca returns as we enter Puno, one of the major towns on our route, it is now 5.30 and we decide to stay over here as ther is little advantage soldering on. We looked up a couple of recommended hotels and move into the town and whilst waiting at the traffic lights we are accosted by a chap from the hotel we are outside of, are we looking for a hotel, no English so wait, he moved a couple of barriers and we pull over. The Manager came out and started negociating, its $70, no no no, long story short $40 for a 3 star hotel all dealt with without even getting off the bikes.
We have secure parking, excellent WiFi, free Pisco Sour and a good room with bath and shower.
For dinner we venture out to a Chinese recommended in one of the books and after I return to try and catch up with the blog, Martin is going up to the square to have a peek and get a couple of photos.
On the way back a band passed us playing drums, pan pipes, whistles and dancing. Up in the square about 4 bands congregate having paraded the streets and there are the odd fireworks going off. Then lots of fireworks, a bamboo tower filled with fireworks is ablaze and where some of the rotating fireworks are out of balance it is touch and go whether the tower will stay of topple. This chap, who seems to be in charge of the fireworks takes one of those multiple box fireworks, there are about 100 tubes each with a firework in them and you light it and off they all go, anyway he puts this down in the middle of the crowd and lights it and people then back away, one finished he takes that back and gets another. He also lit rockets in his hand and just let them go as they fired up, and 2 men were dancing in paper mashie suits and the whole of the outside of the suits were again ablaze with fireworks and they were happy dancing inside. It was fantastic but mad and health and safety did not attend.