The islands of lake titicaca

Hey all, hope you are doing well. This past week has been fun with substantial travels but we are finally in chile and ready to do some skiing/snowboarding.

Getting back from the trek to Machu Picchu last week allowed us to have a little bit of rest before we headed on to Puno and Lake Titicaca. After getting back from our trek we were getting ready for the fiesta Inti Raymi which as I said before was the celebration of the sun god and the solstice. On monday there was a parade that lasted all day and into the night. As soon as each group finished their part in the parade they went to this plaza near our hostel and started drinking excessively. People of all ages were completely hammered and felt the need to go relieve themselves where ever they felt like. It was a rather strange scene but very eye opening to their culture. The next day was the actual celebration and this was taken a whole lot more serious which was entertaining to see. The costumes and clothes that they wore were all very bright colored and extremely elaborate. It was amazing to see because there is nothing in the US where so many people from one town put in so much effort for a festival. This was the biggest celebration of the year for them and you could tell just how much time was put into making it incredible.

The next day we hung out with some friends we met from Canada and had a relaxing day before we had to take an 8 hour bus ride to Puno. We were not planning on staying in puno long because we had the itch to get to chile. The time we did spend in Puno was very interesting and opened our eyes a little bit more on how these people live. In Puno there is Lake Titicaca which is the highest lake in the world that is navigable by a large boat. it is over 8000 square kilometers. The day after we got we took a boat to the isla de uros, or the floating islands. This is a community of aroun 3000 people that live on reeds. They cut these blocks of mud from under the reeds and tie them together in blocks of four. They all float really well which is why they are called the floating islands. They then lay the reeds on top of the mud in stacks in different directions. Then they build another stack on put their houses on top of them. They then dive down to the bottom of the lake and anchor them down in the mud at the bottom. If they wanted to they could hook up a boat to the island and pull it to a different location. It is a very interesting way of life because there are only 4 to 5 families on the small islands and 10 to 12 on the large islands. They rely on tourism as their only means of an income.

We then took our boat cruise to Amancenia island where we were going to stay the night. Phil and I stayed with a family for the night and they cooked us lunch, dinner, breakfast. The interesting thing was that the mom of the family we stayed with was back in Puno. So we stayed with a girl who was 20 who had a 1 year old son, and her younger brother who was 15. After lunch they took us up to a futbol field to meet before we hiked pachatata or father earth mountain for sunset. At the futbol field we played a game at the highest elevation I have ever played. The field was just above 13000 feet. It was said that if you walked around the enclosure at the top of the mountain three times with a wish in your mind that it should come true. Later that night they through a party for us where we all had to dress up in ponchos and wear peruvian hats. They did some traditional dances for us and had us dance with them as well. They get really into their dancing and have a lot of fun with it.

The next day was much more relaxed. We took a boat ride to Tequile island and hiked around before we had lunch. On this island men wear certain hats to say if they are single, married, or a higher part of society. Women wear a piece of cloth around their necks with bon bons on the ends and if they are big they are singe and small they are married. Other than that the island didn´t have much to it. So we took our boat 3 hours back to Puno and relaxed that evening and ran into some friends in our hostel that we had met in Cusco. It is crazy because we run into friends we have met before all the time. The travel circle in Peru is very small.

It was finally time to make our way to Chile. We had to take an all night bus from Puno to Tacna, Peru. Then we took a 2 hour car ride from Tacna to Arica, Chile, then another 4 hour bus ride to Iquique. We found a place called beach hostel and thought that it would suit us well. We wanted to surf here because they are known for having some of the best surfing in the world, and we found this out from our friend Rony we met who is a surf instructor and travels around the world to teach. We met Rony our first night here as he hung out outside his house next to the beach hostel in front of their fire on the sidewalk. They were having drinks and cooking swordfish and invited us to hang out with them for the night. He said he would take us surfing the next day but I got extremely sick the next morning and didn´t get out of bed until 5pm, and was back in bed by 9pm. Talk about a wasted day but the rest was well needed. It was perfect I woke up the next day and felt as though nothing had happened. We met up with Rony and he took us surfing for a few hours. It was a success, for not surfing in quite a few years I was still able to get up a few times but also got washed up quite a few times as well. I know that I am going to be sore tomorrow but at least I will have more than 20 hours to rest because we are going to be taking a bus to Santiago and step right into the heart of winter to finally get some skiing and snowboarding in. It is nice to go from surfing in nice weather to snowboarding in just a couple days. The most exciting part of our trip in our eyes is about to begin.

Hope you all are doing well and enjoying your own adventures of the summer.

Cheers.....

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