Lake Tittikaka

After Cusco and the jungle we moved on to Puno. Puno is located on the shores of Lake Titikaka. Puno isn´t the nicest of town, very small, but it had a huge market which we wandered around for a while trying to decide what to buy the people we were going to stay with during our one island homestay of the trip. We finally decided on some rice, quina (which is like a cereal), and sweets, however we found out that they grow quina and you aren´t allowed to take the kids sweets because they have no dental care at all so we had to change our minds and get some candles and some markers for the kids. For some strange reason they don´t allow you to tip the family which would have been much easier.

The boat trip out to the first island took three hours which probably could have been halved if the boat actually went over 2 miles per hour. The weather was fantastic though and the scenery was amazing, the lake is apparently the highest navigable lake in the world and it is huge. We stopped first on an island where there are two restaurants only both sell Trout or a vegetarian omelette, wow the choices were amazing. After that we went to the next island which is geared up for homestays which apparently give us tourists a taste of the lives of the locals. We met our ´mother´and she then dragged us about 3 miles (well maybe not quite) uphill to her house. Very basic house, the room we were in was ok, had three single beds and a light bulb which was solar powerd. I was staying with Tony and Karrie, we were like a family staying in another family's house. Went for a walk up to the top of the island to watch the sunset, it was awesome, well worth the effort. After the walk up, we went back to our ´mothers´house to get ready for dinner which consisted of soup, very filling and some sort of stew with rice. I managed to have a brief conversation with the "mother" of the house in Spanish. It was an interesting experience. After dinner we retreated to our bedroom to await her coming to get us to go to the discotheque!

Now we come to the fun part of the evening. ´Mom´came with gifts, traditional Peruvian dress for us to wear dancing. I lucked out as the guys only had to wear a poncho, the women however weren´t quite so lucky as they had to go in full skirt and an embroidered shirt. The discotheque was happening! Each song lasted about 15 minutes and we were kept quite busy dancing. Interesting moves, lots of holding hands and moving in and out. Also there is a funny one where everyone on the dance floor grabs hands and runs around dragging the others behing them, seems like they try to make people fly off their feet round the corners. That was quite fun.The dance finished about 10, I guess the homestay people have to do it every night so they don´t stay too long. We went back to bed.

The next day another 2 hour journey took us to the floating islands (during which we were singing songs helped out by my ipod). They were weird, you can´t tell from photos but they are literally made from reeds about 2 meters thick one below the water and one above, which is quite a weird feeling. They are quite bouncy and you can fall down on them without hurting yourself. We took a ride on one of their cool boats that they make out of the reeds and plastic bottles believe it or not. After lunch headed back to Puno for a relaxing afternoon.

We are now in Bolivia, La Paz to be exact. Funny looking city as you come into it you come round a hill and there it is sitting in the bottom of a crater. There are skyscrapers and everything, what on earth are they doing in Bolivia! We wandered round some markets this afternoon looked at some Llama fetuses you can buy and bury under your house for good luck.

Got to go now, maybe I´ll put some pictures on tomorrow.