Lonely Planet describes Puno as “the jumping off spot for Lake Titicaca and a convenient stop for those traveling between Cuzco and La Paz. But it may just capture your heart with its own rickety charm.”

Well, we’re traveling between Cuzco and La Paz, and we want to see Lake Titicaca (in part because it’s just so much fun to say). So far, so good, makes sense to try Puno for a few days. Alas, though, my heart was left uncharmed.

Part of the problem is that while the city of some 150,000 people sits right on the lake, you wouldn’t know it from the downtown area. There is a port that we walked to, but even then all you see is a reedy area and the Bay of Puno, hemmed in by two peninsulas separating the bay from the big lake. And the city just doesn’t have anywhere near the grand colonial architecture we’ve become used to from San Cristobal in Mexico, through Antigua in Guatemala, and Arequipa and Cuzco in Peru. Admittedly, those are some pretty high standards, but I guess our standards have gone up.

Interestingly, pretty much everyone describes “contraband” as one of the major industries in Puno. The proximity to Bolivia means that cheap tax-free goods are smuggled across the border and sold here. I never had the sense that those goods necessarily included drugs, but rather they were the more mundane goods that people use more regularly.

Another problem with Puno is that Lonely Planet strongly recommends against one of the sites I’d have most liked to have seen. The city – sitting at about 12,500 feet above sea level – sits wedged between Lake Titikaka and the foothills leading up to Andean mountains. You’re supposed to be able to climb up a couple of the hills for spectacular views of the city and lake. As Lonely Planet puts it, though, “… as assaults and robberies have been reported (even by groups), it’s not recommended to visit them unless there is a drastic improvement in security.” So we didn’t climb the hills.

The one “must see” sight near Puno is the Islas Uros, the floating islands of the Uros people. Back before the Spanish invasion, the Uros were under attack from the Incas. Discovering that the Incans couldn’t swim, they went a few kilometers out in the relatively shallow bay and started building floating islands made of the abundant totora reeds that grow in abundance in the lake. They cut a bunch down, lay them flat on a section of floating root stock, then lay another layer on top, and then another layer, and on and on until you can walk on it. Then they build houses on it. To keep them from floating away they’re anchored by tying the island to a stake driven into the lake bed. They build tiny “outhouse islands” near the larger islands, letting reeds, roots, and eventually the lake handle the waste. Live there while you fish and avoid the Incas and then eventually sell trinkets to fascinated tourists. And they’re still there today, perhaps 2,000 of them, hundreds of years later.

So out we went. Just when you thought you’d seen all the bizarre ways of life the world has to offer, you stumble on one more. We thought we were avoiding a tour and just taking a ferry out there, but discovered that no, indeed we were trapped on a bit of an annoying tour. It was cool seeing people living on these floating islands and how the reeds serve for everything; the flooring, the houses, the boats, toys, you name it. They even eat them. We did stop in a little café for some tea, though they also served food, beer, and sodas. Just a bunch of people eking out their lives and avoiding the Incas on artificial islands on Lake Titicaca.

Cool, but not really worth spending a couple days there. Fortunately we had a couple days, though, because my pinched nerve was acting up pretty significantly and I needed to go back to a clinic. The hotel recommended a tourist clinic nearby and at first I was pretty pessimistic. The doctor just didn’t seem to have anything more to offer than the three doctors I’d seen in Cuzco and it seemed all I was going to get was something to address inflammation. Near the end of our interview, though, he suggested maybe I should see a neurologist. Sure, I thought, but would I have to go to Lima or something to do that and schedule it weeks in advance? Oh, no, the doc told me; he could be here in 20 minutes.

Sure enough, 15 minutes later this short round gnomish guy walks in. He’s got a heavy limp, likely the result of childhood polio, which meant, to my great benefit, he’d had to learn to work with his brain rather than his body. He asks a bunch of good questions and then scoots over to me to run a bunch of tests, pushing here, pulling there, testing my strength and reflexes and all that. “The good news,” he says through a translator (note that French hospitals in a big city like Poitier don’t have translators, but this little clinic in Puno does), “is that there is no nerve damage. There’s nothing really wrong. Chances are your body remembered the last pinched nerve you had and just seized up when something went a little wrong. The pain is real, but now you’re so tense and stressed out that you can’t relax your muscles to let the pain go away. It’s nothing that a little muscle relaxant won’t solve.”

So he gives me some pills to take morning and night for three days and then a different set of pills for the next 10 days. At first it was like a miracle; after a few hours all the pain was gone. Since then it’s come back in modest doses, but nothing like the first two weeks and seemingly fading away. I’m in love with that little neurologist.

For Lake Titicaca and the floating islands, then, Puno was sort of meh. For visiting with a gnomish neurologist, though, it was a big success. We’re trying to get a full Titicaca experience, so next stop is a small island in the northeast section of the lake.

From Urubamba we were heading down to Lake Titikaka on the border with Bolivia. What’s the best way to go? Well, you could take a bus, a long bus to Puno, the major Peruvian city on the lake. Or, if you want to splurge, you could take the Andean Explorer, a luxury train that crosses through amazing scenery across the Andes down to Lake Titikaka. So we went with the Andean Explorer.

Back in the day, before they had paved the highway to Puno, the train was the only realistic option for getting from Cuzco to the lake. Today the highway is paved and buses are an entirely reasonable option if you’re willing to sit on a bus for eight or nine hours; they even follow pretty much the same route, so you see the same scenery. The train, though, is a way to see Andean Peru in style, in comfortable wing-back chairs, with table cloths, wine, pisco sours, a nice lunch, great tea service, a bar, and semi-open observation car. It genuinely feels like a throwback to the glories of the late 19th century plus internet access so you can keep tabs on how the stock market is doing.

We loved it. We’d done something similar in Switzerland, when we took the Glacier Express from Zermatt to St. Moritz. We both thought this was significantly better; better food, better service, more comfortable, maybe even better scenery (though the Swiss Alps aren’t exactly boring). It’s a ten-and-a-half hour journey, so doing it in style and class makes for a pretty fabulous day. To give you a sense of “style,” I learned while reading up on the route that the car interiors were designed by the same firm that designed Singapore Airlines’ First Class cabins, generally conceded to be the best in the business.

You’d sit, maybe read a little, look out the windows, watch the mountains go by. Our car was almost entirely an Australian tour group with a guide Mark & I loved talking to. The only non-Australians in the group was an American couple from Oregon who won’t travel with American tours for fear they’ll have to deal with Republican.s Gotta love them!

One of the highlights was stopping at La Raya Pass, the high point of the trip at 14,150 feet above sea level. We think that’s the highest either of us have ever been, and it definitely had the feel of just a remarkable and remarkably remote place on earth. From there we descended to Puno, still over 12,000 feet, on our way to explore Lake Titikaka and then move on to Bolivia.

Urubamba. I first heard the word in 1974 when Paul Simon released his Live Rhymin’ album and was accompanied on a couple songs by a group of that name. He explained on the album that Urubamba was a river in Peru that ran past Machu Picchu, and ever since, once I heard those Peruvian flutes, the name has had a certain magic for me. So, when we were looking to explore the area around Cuzco and Machu Picchu and discovered there was a beautiful hotel in the town of Urubamba, right on the river, I jumped at the chance.

It’s worth saying from the start that the hotel, Tambo del Inka, is one of the most beautiful hotels we’ve ever stayed in. Ever. The design, the lighting, the soaring ceilings and gigantic fireplaces, the location right next to the river were all truly exceptional; it was a delight to come back to the hotel after a couple energetic hikes we did.

It’s probably also worth saying that we might be the only people who have ever gone to Urubamba and Cuzco and not gone to Machu Picchu; Urubamba is only about 35 miles from what Lonely Planet calls “the best-known archaeological site on the continent.” In the first place, we were there seven years ago after hiking the Inca Trail, so going there on a train seemed somehow cheap. But cheap it wasn’t. When we got to the hotel and asked about the cost of tickets – train to the ruins and tickets into the site, we were quoted a price of something over $500. So we just said “Heck with it. We’ll do some hikes on our own.”

Which we did. Our first day we caught a local bus to the town of Pisac where there are some Incan ruins high above the city. Again, the hotel quoted us a price of something like $300 for a car, driver, guide, etc. – they’d probably throw in some cold water for free – we said “Yeah, we can do that on our own.” We did and it was a great hike, well marked, up to some pretty great ruins. And then, on returning down to Pisac, we got online and asked TripAdviser for a restaurant recommendation. It was one of those moments you can’t believe you could be so lucky. Here we are in this little town that no one has ever heard of (actually, there is a bit of tourist infrastructure, but I’d certainly never heard of Pisac) and we had an amazing lunch, essentially gourmet quality. Blown away – and so glad we didn’t just settle for whatever the hotel would have guided us to.

The next two days I just went on hikes from the hotel. I had observed, you see, that while sitting is about the most uncomfortable position imaginable for me while I’m dealing with this pinched nerve, walking is great. And walking with a loaded knapsack stretching my back and shoulders is even better. And walking uphill with a loaded knapsack is like catnip for me. It’s essentially the only time I’m pain free. So walk I did. Urubamba sits at about 9,400 feet above sea level but you go up from there. The first day I climbed to over 11,000 feet on a gravel road in a beautiful valley behind the city and the next day up a big hill behind our hotel. One of the things I’ve been intrigued with in these weeks in Peru is just how much of the world, here in South America at least, is two miles or more above sea level. Having had weeks to acclimate to the altitude, starting way back in early February in Guatemala, has been a real luxury.

Finally, I have to again mention how good the food has been in Peru. Urubamba is a pretty small town. It sees its share of tourists but it’s by no means the major destination in the area. Still, we ate at three or four really good restaurants, typically with some Peruvian-Asian fusion thing going on. Just great food.

Oh, and one last thing. What did I learn when I was reading up on the group Urubamba and their collaboration with Paul Simon, this Peruvian music that I’ve loved since 1974? While they’re named after this most famous river in Peru and are known for popularizing Peruvian folk music, the musicians are actually Argentine and Uruguayan. Weird. And one more thing I learned. While traveling in Peru you can get really tired of one of the song they collaborated on with Paul Simon, “El Condor Pasa (If I Could)”; it plays everywhere, constantly. I always assumed it was just an American pop song that was adopted here. Turns out it is in fact a classic Peruvian song, written in 1913, and is considered Peru’s second national anthem. Simon & Garfunkel popularized it for us Gringos, but it really is a native Peruvian song.

That’s todays music history lesson. From Urubamba we went back to Cuzco for the night and then we take a train down to Lake Titicaca where we’re going to spend 10 days or so exploring the Peru-Bolivian border area.