Last night was the coldest we have experienced since Alaska/Yukon. At 6:00 am after the sun had been on the vehicle for 45 minutes the trucks thermometer showed 22°F. The cold, and a desire to cover some distance today had us underway by 6:00am.

It was a beautiful morning with wonderful light and we were surprised and delighted to pass a number of lakes with flocks of pink flamingos. We stopped at the first of these and tried to get close for some good photos but a trio of lovely but pesky white birds got very vocal (we assume we were approaching their nest) and alerted the flamingos to our approach.

The drive to Juiliaca (where we turned off 3S for Puno) was a generally good road, at high altitude (12,000 ft) through very spectacular antiplano scenery. Juiliaco was anything but loverly. On the approach to the town are dozens of small scale, cottage industry, brick kilns belching smoke. Also every building in the town seemed to have re-enforcing steel pocking out of the roof in anticipation of a future additional storey.

The approach to Puno descends from a hill giving a fine view of another relatively un-attractive town that like Cusco seems to be composed entirely of red mud brick buildings. We wound our way towards to dock area in order to see the famous Lake Titicaca only to discover a huge crowd of market stalls and pedestrians strolling around that we had to navigate between and around. It turned out we had arrived just in time for some form of parade; that's why the crowd was there. It made for a very interesting couple of hours just watching the antics of the almost entirely local crowd, the parade members, and the various vendors and vehicles.

We decided not to stay in Puno, but we will be back to Titicaca on our return journey sometime next year.