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Published: July 17th 2008
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Sorry for such a long entry guys but it was hard to break it down!
We headed to Puno early Monday morning from Colca Canyon. We drove through the 5000m area again but this time I was much better, I think after all the walking and spening two days at altitude I had aclimatised. We arrived in Puno about lunch time had some food and milled around for a bit. We went to a rock and reggae bar in the evening for some 2 for 1 Pisco sours!! Im definately beginning to like them now!
Theres a huge strike on in Peru on the 9th July, its all to do with the prices increasing and taxes, the usual things really! Only it could cause problems for us getting out of Puno to head to Cuzco. People block the roads and dont let any traffic out or in so fingers crossed we can get out as we have the Inca trail on the 12th and need to get prepared and aclimatised to the altitude. Although hopefully that wont be too difficult as we are still at altitude here, 3800m I think.
On Tuesday we took a boat journey across
Lake Titkaka to the Island of Tequile. We passed the floating islands on the way with all the boats made out of reeds. We had quite a trek up the island to lunch which was very tiring. The food options were Fish or omelete...neither are my favorite but I opted for fish and it was actually quite nice, it was trout, apart from the bones I could manage it! Then we headed to Amantani, another island not far from Tequile, where we stayed with a traditional Quechuan family. When we arrived we were met by our new mums at the port. Me and Ann were staying with the same family luckily, I wouldnt have liked it on my own!
It was yet another trek up to the house though. We had to keep stopping on the way as we were knackered!! It doesnt seem to bother the women who live there but I guess they are used to it! All the families speak Quechua, and some speak a bit of Spanish. On the boat on the way there we were given Some useful Quechuan phrases, Hello, Thankyou, How are you? etc. We were pretty confident with them when we
arrived! Our new mum showed us to our room, we dropped of our stuff and headed to the football pitch to play with the women on the island. I nearly scored, It was so close but hit the crossbar, I was gutted! Playing football in the altitude was not easy though!
After that we walked up to the top of the island to see the sun set. The place where we sat is very sacred to the Quechaun people. If you make a wish and walk anti clockwise around three times it should come true. Ill be able to tell if my wish came true after this tour!! The sunset was beautiful, It was very peeaceful even though loads of people were up there. On our way back down me, Ann, and Sarah missed the turning on the path and ended up walking half way down the wrong side of the islands. It had started to get really dark luckily we had our torches. We had to climb back up and find the right path, by the time we got back it was pitch black and they were shouting for us, whoops!
We headed to back with our
mum to the house for dinner. Ive been really struggling with eating dinner so it was really difficult to work my way through all the food she gave us. We had a potatoe stew/soup type thing which was lovely but it would have been more than enough. After that she gaves us a plate of rice and vegetables. I couldnt eat much of it and I felt really bad as I dont think they waste any food there. They kept talking to us in Quechua but with our limited phrases, conversation was difficult! After dinner we got dressed up in their traditional clothes and headed to a disco with all the other mums and the rest of our tour. It was really fun, we danced with our mums and they put on a bit of a show for us, very entertaining!
It was freezing at night so I slept in my sleeping bag with my thermals and had three balnkets over the top of me! Believe it or not though im actually getting better with the cold! Honestly!
Breakfast was at 7am, we headed down to the kitchen again where our mum had made pancakes for us. We had
four each, she just kept putting them on my plate and I felt rude saying no or not eating them, especially after not eating dinner the night before! We had a cup of coca tea to wash it all down which was really helpful!
We met with everyone down at the port and after saying goodbye and thankyou to our mum we headed to the floating islands on Lake TitiKaka. They were awesome! They are literally just reeds floating on the lake and the people living on them eat the reeds, make houses and beds from them and make boats! Very surreal! We got a ride on one of the reed boats, they are fantastic! They only last a few months so they have to keep rebuilding them. They also make loads of little gifts from the reeds but I couldnt buy anything as my backpack is full to bursting point! Im not a light packer!!
We headed back to Puno for dinner and drinks in a bar. I tried a passion friut Pisco sour, very delicious! Ann had one too but she could bearly hold her head up as she was so tired after the home stay.
Im sure the altitude makes it worse too! Its off to Cusco hopefully tomorrow to prepare for the Inca Trail, thats if the strike is over! Fingers crossed!
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