San Luis bus company was only 45 minutes late getting started. We left Puno and started climbing. The beginning of the route took us through a number of small, mountain towns.  We stopped a few times to let passengers on and off, a perfect time to buy some choclo (giant corn) or a bag of juice (This seems to be the preferred way to buy and sell it on the fly.)  As we started descending again, we started seeing fields of purple corn, along with rose and sand-colored structures rising from earth of exactly the same hue.  There were many more cows, sheep and pigs than alpacas and llamas.  People alternately harvested or napped in the fields.  We followed the river for a long stretch, and saw women washing clothes and blankets, or setting sheep skins out to dry in the afternoon sun. Stone walls that looked centuries old divided fields and towns.

As we neared Cuzco, the scenery became more woodsy.  Signs offered timber for sale.  The road leveled off into the valley, with tall green mountains surrounding us on both sides.  Suddenly we were entering the city.  The bus station was a mad house, with people aggressively offering cheap lodging or taxi rides into the city at inflated prices.  We had arranged for our hotel to pick us up, and after a phone call or two we found each other.  The room (although definitely an upgrade) costs three times what we were paying in Puno, but we quickly learned that this would be the case for Cuzco in general.  There are by far more tourists here than anywhere else we’ve been in Peru, and the average income of those tourists seems to be quite a bit higher.  Most people seem to be on a tour of some kind, and all are headed to Machu Picchu one way or another.  If this is low season, it’s hard to imagine what high season looks like!