Lake Titicaca - A little to touristy

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This had to be the most touristy place we visited durring our trip. We stayed in Puno and took a one day tour of the lake which included an hour long visit of the floating islands and a couple of hours on Taquile island, with a lot of sailing in between. The tour of the floating islands included a demonstration, with scale models, of how they build the islands, this was actually pretty interesting untill they finished it by ploping a little model house, cooking pot, boat and people on it that were much to big for there model and quite unecessary as we were sitting a couple of feet away from the actual house, cooking pit and boat (the floating islands are not that big). The demonstration continued to get even more ridiculous as they proceeded to demonstrate life on the islands, finally finishing with a duck hunting demonstration. In this demonstration one person used a very dead and defeathered duck and made it prance around while someone else aimed a very large rifle at it and pretended to shoot. Following the demonstration we were given 10 minutes to check out the island, again the islands are really small so this ment we had 10 minutes to check out the touristy arts and crafts they were trying to sell us. They then took us out on a boat ride (straw boat), but before we departed we were "treated" to a preformace of songs from all of our home countries, these included almost unrecognizable renditions of twinkle twinke little star, and Frere Jaques just to name a few of a seemingly neverending list. Once the boat finally departed they asked (demanded) a donation to help out the kids and families on the islands. It seems the tour company doesn´t give them any money for us visiting there Islands. Once on Taquile island, we (and most of the group) decided to take off and explore on our own, as we had a feeling that lunch was going to cost us way more than anticipated and was going to use up all of our time on the island, as it turns out there really wasn't much to see. The only upside to the day was the beautiful sunset we got to watch as we sailed back to Puno, but otherwise this was just way to touristy.

We keep ending up places on a party weekend. In Puno was no exception. Sunday we ended up sitting around watching a parade which involved a couple of marching bands, different military units, All the towns different clubs and associations. Leading each group is a bunch of young kids. The kids are the ones stealing the show! They ranged in ages of about 3 to 6. They were to march in unison, some holding flags, all dressed up. We all know the attention span of a child. They were walking every direction, stopping whenever they felt like, waving to friends and family. The funniest ones are the ones taking there job seriously. The ones only looking forwards, concentrating, making sure there arms and leg are moving in unison.

Cheers

Tim and Meagan

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Comments

[Manish]

Island Taquile
Mmmmmmm Tequila Island... Aaaarrrrrrgggghhh!