The tour to Sillustani was actually pretty cool and I enjoyed it. (I keep forgetting this is supposed to be fun. The travel concerns lately have been getting me down.) Guide very informative, spoke about 5 languages too.
On the way back we stopped off to visit a family in some rural kind of farmhouse. I am sure he does this every tour and I am sure they are OK with it (the guide asks you to leave money in a bowl for them) but I felt awkward as fuck. No one else seemed too bothered. But FFS, we're wandering around their mostly outdoors house (peering into the rooms) behind the guide, taking pictures cos it's all so weird to us (e.g. they had a few guinea pigs running around loose and a sort of run in the back garden with loads more, bred for food of course) and sort of ignoring them (although I couldn't have brought myself to look them in the eye most of the time) and while it was sort of interesting I just sort of deliberately zoned out and tried not be there.
I think that put me a bit on edge. I was first back on the bus, two kids shoved things at me, I don't know if they were trying to sell them to me or begging for more money but although I did my usual 'no, gracias' I felt bad after just having been round.
Some of the other guys even waved at the family stood outside the house as we left. I just looked the other way.
Anyway, I then got slightly lost when we got dropped off - I didn't want to go back to the hostel, but I needed a bureau de change to convert my massive excess of Bolivian notes to sols. (Because there's no cash machine in Copacabana I had had to withdraw loads 'just in case'.) I deliberately only changed 300 in case I got ripped off, and I did - I paid 2.7 Bolivianos per sol compared to 2.6 at the office OPPOSITE THE PERUVIAN IMMIGRATION POST (i.e. obviously a rip off location) earlier today.
I am also getting a Brazil kind of feeling about the country. Vague hints in the guide book about Lima (OK, that's one city), the hostel guy telling me to stick to the highlighted streets here at night, the tour guide pointing out some (frankly small and hideous) houses as the abodes of the rich who had private schools and *private security*.
I really wanted to like Peru and I didn't come badly disposed to Puno either. The Peruvian guys I met in Santiago seemed pretty cool. OK, it's only the first day and I've been dashing around and there's all this shit with the money, but still.
Just have to drink, eat and sleep (a tiny amount, damn 6am - if I want breakfast - start) on it. I wish I could put this down to low blood sugar or something but for all the fact that it was average and not an overly large portion, I did have lunch at 1pm.
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