The trike trip was a bust. Two days and it was over. But I wasn’t ready for the experience to end just yet. I could have kept going actually… and I wanted to. But a flat tire prevented that… and so I gave up the trike and continued down the road on foot.

Actually, I backtracked. Instead of pointing myself toward Cuzco, I did an about-face and marched for more than 20 kilometers along a lonely deserted farm road around the Laguna Umayo lake to the Sillustani ruins – a pre-Inca burial ground where stone tombs are built above ground in tower-like structures called “chullpas“.

After several hours of walking (and with sore shoulders), I finally arrived at the site, paid 6 soles to enter, took a ton of photographs, and then asked the guard whether it would be okay for me to camp on the premises.

The guard said it would be no problem for me to camp in the area, but he wanted me to camp in the populated city area of Sillustani. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to camp near the funneral towers… and that’s exactly what I did.

The guard finally agreed to let me camp on the tall mesa where to chullpas are perched, but I had to camp at the far end of the mesa, off the main tourist track, and out of sight from any of the people in the area. I had no problem with that. In fact, it’s exactly what I wanted!

The good news was… I had the entire place to myself and the views from my campsite were spectacular.

After setting up my tent, I positioned myself on the rocks overlooking the Laguna Umayo and watched for hours as fishermen in small wooden rowboats paddled in and out of the lake from small clay homes on the perched high abve the shore.

Off in the distance, dark gray clouds moved in while lightning struck the ground and thunder roared off in the distance.

When it started to rain I rolled inside my tent and spent the next several hours listening to music on my iPod.

In the morning I packed up my gear, walked through a herd of llamas, spent a few more minutes passing through the Sillustani chullpas, and then made my exit in the tiny tourist town of Sillustani.

There was a new guard in the guard tower and as I walked past, he waved me into his booth. Uh oh.

To make a long story short, the guy wanted money. He said I needed to pay 15 Soles because I had camped out at the ruins. And yet, the guard from the previous night had said nothing about there being any kind of fee.

I argued with the man for a few moments, told him I didn’t understand, and pretended like I didn’t know what was going on.

After a few minutes of this I decided I had had enough. I simply stopped talking to the guard, picked up my backpack, threw it over my shoulders, and made like I was about to take off.

“Are you leaving?” The guard asked me.

“Si. I’m leaving.” I replied.

And that was that. I took off down the road, jumped in a white combi with two Swiss hippies and drove out to the main highway that runs from Puno to Juliaca. Once there, I hitched a ride in another white combi bound for the city of Juliaca. When I got to Juliaca, I jumped in a motor-taxi and rode a short distance across town to the bus station. I fired off a quick email at a nearby Internet cafe just to let my parents know that I was still alive… I bought a ticket for a 5.5 hour bus ride to Cuzco (the ride ended up taking about 8 hours)… and I ate an ice cream while getting the “gringo gaze” from countless individuals in the bus station.