Puno and Lake Titicaca, Peru

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And so to Peru, where its got to be said, any south american saying that word is pretty sexy!!

We jumped into 2 three wheeled bicycles with driver who raced each other to the border, yep I won, but through no effort on my part obviously. We then travelled for about 3 hours arriving in Puno around 7pm.

The next day we took a boat across the harbour of Lake Titicaca as I made Sarah, Marcello and Jesus visit the oldest boat on the Lake 'The Yavari' It was built in England and then disassembled and transported to Peru in pieces, via ship, train and finally mule. It was supposed to take 6 months but ended up taking six years. Anyway you can imagine how excited they all were to be visiting an old boat, but the journey across the lake was outstanding. Afterwards I had my first fish dinner in Peru.

The evening Chris arrived and was taken up with drinking vodka & cokes and Pisco Sours as apparently (and Im not sure I really believe this) in Peru you start celebrating your birthday at midnight, so we went out clubbing with the locals.

After arriving home in the morning we crashed and felt pretty rubbish for the rest of the day. Still I meraculously received cards from England (care of Chris) and had Happy Birthday sung to me in spanish by Marcello and Jesus. We did go for a beer in the evening but none of us were really up for it, so had a early night for a change.

The next day we were up at 7am to do a tour of Lake Titicaca. What a beautiful place. First we went to the floating islands of Uros, which are made of reeds. There is only about 28 people living on the island that we went to, and survive from fishing or us tourists visiting. The children are really cute though and want to hold your hands and stuff. Not sure I could live there though!! We went out on a reed boat for a while whilst there which was cool, as the weather was fantastic and there is hardly any noise, so really really tranquile. Afterwards we got back onto the motor boat and headed from Tequile Island. Population approximately 2000.

Again the views are absolutely stunning and you get to walk round quite a lot of the island, well you have to, to get fed!!. (If I ever find a computer with a USB port I will upload some photos)

We got back to Puno around 5pm and the boys had done there chore for the day, which was to buy the five of us bus tickets to Cusco. Gringo Capital of South America!!!

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