All Aboard! Puno to Cusco - The Perez Family in Peru, Part IV

As my wonderful and talented ghost writer continues chronicling our trip through Peru, my blog moves from Puno to Cusco on a kick ass train ride. Hope you enjoy Part IV of The Perez Family in Peru!

There were a couple ways for us to get from Puno to our next stop, Cusco. When we were planning the trip, we had seen and heard about train rides through this stretch of the country, and we decided to give it a try. We took Peru Rail’s Andean Explorer (check out the journey on their site with a much better description than I can provide at perurail.com), which is a ten-hour luxury train ride from Puno to Cusco. It took us between mountains and clouds and between mountains and highlands. The Andean Explorer is beautifully decorated in the style of the Pullman trains of the twenties. 
Marlee and Jamie with the train on one of the stops along the way. Love this photo!
Bright and early, we were ready for a relaxing ride.
We sat in a dining car, which is like traveling while at your dining room table.  There was a car-bar that had a lounge with an outdoor observatory area. It was very nice. We ate, drank, played cards, read, enjoyed the scenery, took naps, ate and drank some more.  An all around wonderful trip. 

After some time on the trip, the happy young couple is relaxed. [Ahem....pop's words not mine]
Isaac, Debby and Chris enjoying the views of the observation car. Can you spot Jamie and Nathan?


Nathan enjoying some pisco sours during the train's pre-lunch cocktail hour. [Being the frugal PCVs that we are, we made sure they were FREE pisco sours before accepting them.]
Lunch was just as delicious!
Nathan told us that the BATHROOM was the nicest place he had seen in all of Peru! After checking it out for myself I found it was pretty nice. A Fancy train ride indeed.
We were treated to a fashion show. Chris and Jamie watched a bartending demo: How to Make Pisco Sours. Chris volunteered to get behind the bar and give it a go. Andean music  was played live while a woman dressed in various traditional outfits demonstrated regional dances and yes, I was pulled up for a dance. Chris missed it but we made sure to get a pic. 

Chris learning how to make a pisco sour. Mad bar-tending skills, YO! [Once again, pop's words not mine.]
Enjoying the fruits of her labor. 
You got to get down! Putting on a dance clinic on the way to Cusco.

Jamie, our tea fanatic, was hyped up about the tea service that would come in the afternoon all day long. She was so happy when it finally happened (and so were we, because she finally stopped talking about it). But seriously, it was really nice. We had morning snacks, a wonderful lunch and afternoon tea. All while relaxing and enjoying some of the most beautiful scenery we’d ever seen. I thought I had been to the mountains, but these were so incredible and the perspective we were treated to while driving through them was amazing. 

Teatime at last!
[The best part of the trip, for sure!]
The mountains were beautiful.



What could have been... The "other" way to Cusco.
Next stop: Cusco!

The train ride from Puno to Cusco was definitely one of the best parts about our trip. After spending hours on buses, getting crammed into crazily-driven taxis and combis, withstanding countless delays in travel due to landslides, rain, construction work or basic fog, I decided this was the only way I'd want to travel for the rest of my service. Unfortunately, there really aren't many other trains around here... LAME.

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