Now for the travel experience most people dread, the one that keeps many people from even contemplating a trip to a third-world country, especially when they’re beyond a certain age. I’ve been through various forms before, but this was the most serious. It was also the easiest to live through since I was being taken care of by Nina’s very competent and thoughtful staff.
As to background material, if you care, you can try to figure it out. I heard that the peasants were on strike because of a water rights issue in the Amazon region. I never understood why that caused people to block roads on the altiplano. And the Peruvian use of the word “strike” really confused me. Who actually was on “strike”? the transportation workers? peasants? I’d call creating road blockades “protesting”.
On a more personal level, the situation was this. I was in Puno and scheduled to catch a 7:50 a.m. flight from the nearest airport in Juliaca to Cusco. When my guide let me off at my hotel after the Lake Titicaca excursion, he said he would pick me up at 6 a.m. Later in the evening, he called to say there was a strike scheduled for the next day and that we should leave by 5:30.
I dutifully got up at 4:30 and was waiting when the driver arrived, but no guide. He lived some miles outside of town and despite leaving home early, he had been unable to find transportation to get him to the hotel. I gather he had walked a significant part of the way when we picked him up on the road out of town, heading for the airport.
About half-way to Juliaca the protestors blocked the road. A policeman had stopped us a few miles before that to say that one van had arrived at his check point with a smashed windshield. I, of course, had no idea what conversation transpired between my guide and the driver, but we had soldiered on until we encountered the protestors. By the time we reached them we were following two other tourist vans. The protestors pointed to a rough dirt track and we followed the other vans. It was slow going with huge holes and ruts. At one point, the driver in front of us who had a longer vehicle got out and put some rocks in one of the ditches before driving over it. Eventually we got to a paved road which I think was the one towards Sillustani rather than Juliaca. We hadn’t gone very far when the road reached the base of a cliff. As we rounded a corner we found huge boulders and rocks being hurled off the cliff, and a group of protestors using them to build a wall. There was no way we were going any further. So we turned around and followed another dirt track which eventually got back to the main road, but we were closer to Juliaca than when we got off. We were now at a section under reconstruction.
All the time there were tense conversations between the driver, another guide who was on the way to the airport to pick up a group, and my guide. My guide later said that the driver was more concerned about his vehicle than his passengers.
Anyway, we were now forced to abandon our vehicle. My guide took my suitcase, I wore my pack, and we walked towards Juliaca. This section of the road had a new layer of tarmac, so it was easy to roll the suitcase. All one had to do was dodge the numerous rocks and pieces of broken glass strewn around and avoid the seams and drop-offs associated with variations in layers of paving. There were hundreds of people walking both ways on the road; everyone from peasants to students to business men in suits. The other guide ran on ahead, so that when we reached the protestors barrier on the Juliaca end, he had arranged a ride for us to the airport. I’m not sure how far we went, but it was probably between one and two miles.
I was too busy walking to take a picture, so I found this one on the internet.
Rocks on the road between Puno and Juliaca (Reuters)
I’m not sure what happened to the tourists in the van in front of us; they were a larger group, so there was no way their guide could have managed their luggage.
My flight to Cusco left on time at 7:50 a.m., but we didn’t arrive at the airport until about 8:15 a.m. At various times I was told that 17 or 21 people missed the flight.
Here’s another clip from the Internet. My understanding is that the police came through mid-day to clear up the mess, and then the protesters returned again the next day to repeat the process.
| Police clear a road covered in debris placed by protesters in Puno June 25, 2009. Peruvians from the Andean cities of Puno, Juliaca, Cuzco and Andahuaylas protested against the government by blockading roads and highways. Reuters |