I’m sorry, but I have nothing really good to say about Juliaca. It’s a dump. Except for the main roads in and out of town and the road to the airport, most of the streets aren’t paved. Wide boulevard-like avenues remain unpaved with dusty median strips.
Unpaved boulevard in Juliaca
Piles of garbage grow in the middle of side streets. All of this despite the fact Juliaca is not a small town. It is the largest city in the Puno district with around 250,000 inhabitants and is the primary commercial center of the Altiplano.
Having missed the only flight to Cusco for the day, my guide and the office staff worked on finding a way to get me to Cusco. The direct flight was booked solid for the next day, so the best they could do was a flight to Lima and then a flight to Cusco, both the following day. That meant spending the night in Juliaca.
Getting back to town turned out to be a difficult task. By the time, we were ready to leave the airport, all the taxis had disappeared. Eventually, my guide talked someone into driving us into town. Then, there was the problem of finding a (decent) hotel. The first two he tried were full, but he eventually found me a room at the three-star Royal Inn in the heart of the city.
Now this hotel is listed in at least one guide book, and its restaurant is recommended as a good value. But the listing includes the words “heaters in rooms.” Take it as a red flag, and don’t move in without it in the winter. There is no central heating. My room in Puno had a space heater too, but I never needed to use it, although it got quite cold at night outside. So, maybe there it was just a back-up, or maybe my room got enough sun during the day that I never felt the need to use it. But in Juliaca, my room had only a tiny window that opened into a shaft-like space that only hotels seem to have. There was no way the sun could warm the room. The room also lacked artificial light. The lightbulbs reminded me of those in the electric candles I put in my windows at Christmas time. My guide had discussed the heater issue with the desk clerk, who promised to bring one to the room. Needless to say, I had to call several times, and only when my guide came back in the late afternoon to bring my boarding passes and discuss the logistics for the next day did I finally get a heater. Interestingly, from my window I could look down a floor into a conference room where people were having a meeting with the windows ajar! Maybe they had long underwear on under their suits, or maybe that was where all the space heaters were.
On the other hand, the food in the hotel’s restaurant was good. At lunch time it was packed with businesspeople and families. I was the only North American and obvious tourist in the place. It was quieter in the evening. My only complaint was that when I asked for bread with my evening meal, I was given two hamburger rolls for which they charged me some outrageous sum. I wanted one of the delicious rolls served with most Peruvian meals.
Since there are no real tourist sights in Juliaca, my guide took me on a pedicab tour that ended at the central market.
On a Pedicab in Juliaca
Perhaps you remember my mentioning the prevalence of rebar sprouting from rooftops in an earlier post. If you look at the background, there’s a regular forest of the stuff. There were lots of oddly incomplete buildings in Juliaca.
Will they ever finish it?
The market in Juliaca had much more than the usual food and clothing items. One could buy all kinds of electronics including name-brand large screen HDTV’s, cell phones, and high-end digital cameras. On the other hand, Apple products were in short supply. There were numerous stalls selling cut-rate CD’s and DVD’s. My guess is that one would have to be very careful when buying any of these imported goods.
At over 12,000′, it was a breath-taking climb!
