Neither Kay or I realized when we got to Puno that its elevation would affect us with altitude sickness already. We both had headaches, a bit of nausea, a general sense of feeling unwell, and were really winded walking around. My headache felt like a vague hangover with stuffed up ears, but soon I realized that my stomach was upset probably due to the altitude and not food we had eaten.
For our first dinner, we went to Mojsa Restaurant in the main square and ordered some coca tea to help our headaches.
Our waitress was American and I was really happy to know that she knew what gluten was and could recommend several things to me.
I ordered the Sirloin steak with Andean chimichurri, golden huayro and sweet potatoes, and parsley alioli sauce before getting pretty sick and running to the bathroom several times. When I came back, I’d lost my appetite completely (another symptom of altitude sickness) and it was a shame because my food looked really yummy.
As I mentioned in our homestay post, we spent the next day in the care of locals who cooked mainly corn and potatoes, all gluten free. The soup below was absolutely delicious and vegetarian, with fresh muña tea herbs for our tea.
Also at lunch after the soup, we got a big bowl of various potatoes, some carrots I think, as well as a big piece of salty goat cheese.
I was really impressed with the cooking the entire homestay because the kitchen was basically a small hovel off the eating area. It looked more like a barn or trash room because the family always swept everything from the eating area into the small kitchen space so that they could pick things up to burn later on. I was SO curious to see how they really cooked in a space like that. It was very small and cramped, with no vents for the smoke.
For dinner we had a kind of carrot and potato mix with rice.
The next morning I was concerned when our mama served us what looked like pancakes. Communicating with Kay’s Portuñol to their dialect of Quechua was a little tricky, but we verified that there was no “Harina de Trigo” and that it should just be made out of corn, so I ate my pancakes with coca tea and they were delicious.
Next on our homestay tour, we had left Amantaní Island and headed to Taquile Island where we had a big goodbye lunch before heading back to Puno. Here I asked our guide to make sure the food was OK for me. 
First up was some quinoa soup. We realized on the trip that quinoa, which we eat so often now with my celiac diet, often comes from Peru, and that the local diet uses it heavily, to my benefit.
For lunch we had a choice and I picked fresh fish with a side of rice, fries, and some veggies. I also purchases an additional Coke out of the homestay package because I felt icky and headachey and it took my headache right away. After that, I pretty much felt fine and headache-free from the altitude for the rest of the trip. Still extra winded though. 😉
Back in Puno, I wanted to go back to Mojsa Restaurant because I didn’t believe that the food had made me sick and I really wanted to try their gluten free brownie for dessert. It really had to be the altitude, which is quite a common reaction from travelers.
Kay and I decided to split a ceviche as our appetizer because we hadn’t had it in Lima yet and it was delicious, it was trout ceviche with sweet potatoes and crunchy corn. If you are heading to Peru, make sure to try this signature Peruvian dish of fish cured in citrus. 
For my main, I got the grilled trout fillet with a passion fruit and rocoto pepper sauce, served with sautéed vegetables. And a Pisco Sour, because we’d hiked a tough walk on Amantaní Island. 😉
For dessert, I got my brownie and shared a tiny bit with Kay, who was quite stuffed himself.
On our fourth day in Puno, we thought we’d try something else out and we had the dreaded breakfast search, which is honestly still the worst part of traveling as a celiac. I’d eaten a snack bar or two before we found Cafe Bar de la Casa del Corregidor, which seemed like it was the cafe of a kind of hostel in the area.
Muña tea and espresso were ordered, as well as juice because it was breakfast for us.
The menu was not extremely gluten-free friendly, but I got some kind of frittata that met my needs.
We also decided to split some chicken kebabs. Looking at them is making me hungry again.
After we walked up to the Condor in Puno, we stopped at the cafe again for some classic Inca Kola, which is like bubble gum flavored pop.
I also ordered a quinoa soup because breakfast didn’t fill me enough.
And they were so kind to give us more corn to munch on.
For our last meal before our night bus to Cusco, we just went back to Mojsa Restaurant again. I’m still not one for repeats, but it makes life so much easier as a celiac when you know there is a safe restaurant with decent food. I’m making peace with the lack of spontaneity because I don’t have a choice in the matter. What makes life easy, makes life easy.
Because it happened to be our 4th anniversary that night, I decided to go all out and try their kitschy oven baked guinea pig served with sweet potato puree, orange sauce and a small rocoto pepper and tomato salad. Yep, that is a guinea pig and this lady had no shame in eating it. It was GLUTEN FREE!
It tasted alright, maybe a bit more gamey than chicken or beef. It was a bit hard to get all the meat off the bone though and I ended up finishing it chicken-wings style.
For dessert, we opted to split the second gluten free dessert, which was a kind of hot, sweet, quinoa porridge with raisins. It was very filling.
Up next, we arrive in Cusco the days we’d planned to acclimatize to the altitude we just encountered in Puno. Oops.
More from our trip to Peru:
We were led to the second level of the house to a small funny, very short door that you had to duck to get into the room. There we found a nice clean bedroom with low ceilings and separate beds. No cuddling for Kay. 😉
We were the only ones staying in the four bedroom room, so we dropped our things and made ourselves comfortable. Below you can see how much taller Kay was than the short door. The locals were not tall, but I like to believe that the house was also made for hobbits. 🙂
It was a lot to take in, these new surroundings that were SO different than our Swiss house back home.
I was a little nervous about eating. I had asked the guide about my celiac gluten problems and he said that it shouldn’t be a problem. The locals on the island mainly eat a diet of mainly corn and one of the 4000 varieties of potatoes in Peru.
Our mama also showed us that the little plant on the table is not for decoration. It is actually muña tea leaves. She showed us to take some and put it in our cups with hot water. It was so delicious, I actually preferred it over coca tea. It has a bit of a minty flavor.
Chickens in the front yard, although meat is eaten pretty seldom on the island.
The house had a water tap out in the front yard and this was the only water supply. There was no running water in the house, including the bathroom. I was pretty happy that Kay brought his hand sanitizer! We would flush by using a bucket of rain water. I am used to flushing by bucket by now, but in Thailand we could usually wash our hands in running water, so this was something new to me, to see how people live with very minimal amenities. 
Down by the coast, the scenery was beautiful, but still pretty cold. It warmed up a little during the day, but it was freezing by night. The people here are used to both the altitude and the harsh weather conditions. Many of the women did not need shoes and still had the warmest hands!
Kay and I were enjoying the warmth from walking up the hills. We needed to take our time, being out of breath, but it was the first time that we were really warm! 🙂
The island has a school for the children, much like the floating islands, but it was on the other side of the island from where we stayed. The youngest daughter in the house needed to get up early and walk across the whole island every day to go to school. We were a little surprised to see she had some Western items like a new-age backpack, with all her other very traditional Peruvian clothing.
I was still feeling headache-y and nauseous from the altitude, so we took a little rest before dinner. It was like being a little hungover all day long, but the head just felt a bit stuffed up or blocked somehow. We drank more coca, but we didn’t have any altitude sickness tablets, so we just tried to bear through it.
There wasn’t much time to rest before it was dinnertime. I was really interested to poke my head in the cooking area of the kitchen.
On one side sat a little stove where our mama would stuff things in to burn. We kept seeing her sweep things into the cooking area from the rest of the kitchen like leaves or trash, which she would then put into the stove to keep it fired up. We could tell there is not an extreme amount of education on the island, because our mama had no qualms about putting in pieces of plastic to burn without knowing the ill effects. It burns, right?
You guys, this baby alpaca was the CUTEST THING EVER. He was so still and docile, he would just stand next to the stove and look at the fire. I wanted to eat him up. (And not in the way that I ate up other alpacas on this trip…)
Here you can see a bit more of how our mama’s daughter could heat the skillet up from below. I thought it was so impressive how wonderful these women could cook with such rudimentary means.
Meanwhile, mama started feeding the baby alpaca. Cue the squeals from all the cute.
If you aren’t in love with this baby alpaca by now, I can’t help you.
After dinner we met our guide again and started a hike up to the peak of the island, to an altitude of 4200m to complete the same pilgrimage that the locals make once a year, including a small ceremony to walk around the peak’s prayer area three times for good luck.
From there, we waited for the sun to set over a magnificent landscape.
The locals on the island were of course selling their wares, which Kay supported by buying a scarf. I had already bought a hat from my mama’s family earlier in the day, so I declined more purchases. It was a little awkward being put in the buying position, but the cost was so little to us and would help the locals out, so we played into the scheme.
Others bought items as well, and the path was lined with locals wanting to sell their hand woven wares. At least you knew on this island, that the goods were more or less really made by hand and not machine-knit like the goods in the Puno markets. Although we were so chilled in our place in Puno that we’d ended up buying some sweaters there anyway.
As the sun set, the temperature quickly started dropping back to freezing. Brrr. We ran the gamut from sweating up the hill to shivering at the top and sweating on the way back down.
Although it took a lot for the heart to climb up, the view was definitely worth it.
Here I am in my new hat. Kay thinks it’s weird and knobby, but I think it’s unique and has character. 🙂
Back down in the town, our papa picked us up and we headed back to the house in the dark, with our headlamps on and our papa using a hand-generated flashlight. The locals have a little electricity in the homes with solar panels giving light, but that’s about it. We thought it was great that he can use the hand-cranked flashlight.
While I felt a little insecure dressing up in a culture that I didn’t really understand, our mama and papa seemed happy to invite us into their family for an evening of dancing. The whole stay seemed like they genuinely enjoy showing their lifestyle to foreigners, and make some extra money off of it as well.
Shortly after the photo, we went home earlier than the others because Kay still had a pretty bad headache from the altitude. I also wasn’t feeling great in the head.
I’ve never seen this much hail left outside after a storm, but it hailed for an hour at least until turning back to rain for several hours during the night. Thankfully in the morning it had finished so that we didn’t need to pack up in the rain. Also, the tin roof was expertly made so that none of our belongings got wet. I was very impressed by the craftsmanship.
Kay’s head felt better the next morning, but I felt a little awful. I think I was having a combination of altitude sickness and caffeine withdrawal or a neck/shoulder issue, because I felt horrible until I had some Coca Cola later that day on Taquile Island. More on that next.
The weather was a little so-so during our whole stay and shortly after we arrived for dinner the first night, it started pouring in the square outside the restaurant.
At the advice of our very helpful airBNB host, we left for a one night homestay trip which was incredible and extremely memorable. It rained a lot the night we were gone and when we got back, it poured some more in Puno.
Puno by night below, on the way back up to the flat.
On our last day there wasn’t much to do. We went for a lazy brunch in the morning and soaked in the nice bright plants before hiking up to the condor statue overlooking the city in the afternoon.
Any hiking in altitude was quite tough. We thought that living near the Alps and hiking in them would help, but we probably don’t hike much above 1700-2000m normally, so we were struggling. Especially me, with my tough time dealing with uphills anyway. It was a nice way to work up a sweat in that cold weather!
The view over the city from the condor was lovely.
The condor itself was a bit of an oddity. We didn’t see any actual condors on our trip, but this guy was looking over the city, attracting tourists from far and wide.
He was also huge! Look at Kay below for scale.
Such a big bird meant we had to do some cheesy photos. 🙂
As we watched the sky, we saw storm clouds rolling in from behind the hills again.
We decided not to stay too long before the storm came, which it did. 😉 
Down in town, we stopped by a local dance competition going on and watched a few routines from young women. The music is quite different from back home!After dinner we headed to the bus station for our overnight bus ride to Cusco, which was pretty horrifying for me, although it didn’t seem to bug Kay that much. The bus was overly heated and since I was sitting next to the heater, I spent the night tossing and turning, dehydrated and sweating, despite taking all my warm layers off including socks and shoes and rolling my pants off. Having not slept at all, I was in a thoroughly sour mood when we arrived in Cusco. It was not a fun way to spend the wedding anniversary with Kay, but he booked the overnight tickets for that day. 😉
The first part of our trip was already quite adventurous. I’ll write more about our visiting to the Floating Islands, Amantaní Island, and Taquile Island later.