Peru Guide
The Titicaca Basin
Ilave
About two-thirds of the way between Puno and Juli you pass through the village of ILAVE, where a major side road heads off directly down to the coast for Tacna (320km) and Moquegua via (231km). Ilave is quite an important market town and has a large Sunday market selling colourful clothing and coca leaves, and also hosts a few shamanic fortune-tellers. The town also has a surprisingly large and modern Terminal Terrestre, where all the buses from Puno stop and from where it's possible to catch services to Tacna and Moquegua on the coast. A large Plaza de Armas hosts a statue to Coronel Francisco Bolognesi, hero of the Arica battles between Peru and Chile, while half a block to the south, the ancient and crumbling Iglesia de San Miguel has an impressive cupola and belfry. If you want a place to stay , the very basic Hostal Grau, on the plaza at Jr Dos de Mayo 337 (Price: Up to $10), is just about bearable. For food, try the Pollería Ricos Pollo, Jr Andino 307, towards the market from the plaza.
After crossing the bridge over the Río Ilave, the road cuts 60km across the plain towards Juli, passing by some unusual rock formations scattered across the altiplano of the Titicaca basin, many of which have ritual significance for the local Aymara population. The most important of these is the Gateway of Amaru Muru, a doorway-like alcove carved into the rock and said by indigenous mystics to serve as a dimensional link to the ancestors, a belief shared by new agers, who view it as the Andean "star gate", a kind of link to non-Earthly beings and other worlds.