On the next day, the rail line followed the road towards Puno for most of the trip, and I kept on taking pictures of empty rails:

in the meantime, the road we were using, while not congested, certainly had its fair share of truck traffic:

until, suddenly, and unexpectedly, a train came right towards us:

It seems to be pulling only tankers - this is consistent with the road traffic, the majority of which was fuel or acids for the various mining operations that seem to be taking place all around the area.

I even managed to get a picture with llamas in front of it:

(because yes, this is llama territory... more pictures in the next diary)

We later drove by the highest station on the line (and I presume one of the highest altogether), not far from Lake Titicaca:

Coming down the valley, the train line snuggled between the road and the river, but we did not see another train:

Normal blogging of the sites we visited in the past 2 days will follow - I have hundreds of pictures but it's a bit slow to upload them all.