Puno doesn’t look the most prepossessing town in Peru. Like all other Peruvian cities, it has a Plaza de Armas, and taken from this drone footage, it has more high-rises than I would have imagined. I wonder how they would stand up in an earthquake- do they have earthquakes there? Oh yes, they do- they had a magnitude 7 on 1 March 2019.
But the real appeal of Puno is that it is the gateway to Lake Titicaca. You can do a tour which includes a night on Taquile island in a homestay. I must say, viewing all these videos from the comfort of my desk, that there is a much stronger emphasis on the tourist economy here than other places that I’ve been to. I know that people’s livelihoods depend on the sales they make, but it seems to have such a distorting effect on the economy.
So how would I feel about a homestay? Here’s an interesting article about the experience. I think I’d probably do it- I don’t envisage that I’d be coming back here. Do they speak Spanish, I wonder? Or Quechua?
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 