The Mattatour gets cultural.

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It had to happen evenchile. After avoiding culture of all sorts for most of my trip, all of a sudden I'm surrounded by traditional this, authentic that. And I can't stop buying souveniers because they are just so ridiculously cheap. Like a pence.

Aside- have just finished a book called Marching powder about a jail in bolivia called san pedro, which is so corrupt that if a prisoner had money then he could buy a flat in the 5 star block, they were running shops, restaurants, making and selling the best cocaine in the world, and all by bribing guards, judges etc. very interesting. they even do tours by the inmates and you can stay a night in the jail. would have done this however 2 months ago a tourist was held hostage and killed. this would have been bad.

I digress. I left you with baited breath whilst I returned to my hotel after my slight lack of concsciousness to meet my group. The tension mounts....

Group so far as i know them

Colin- current friend, 30, nice guy
3 21yr old girls (no is the answer) who are also nice, very durham uni-ey though. one of them is very small, much like the bolivian and peruvian women, who are pointlessly tiny. The children are microscopic.
A german woman who is also nice
2 norwegian guys henrich and urstein who are funny and drink. like them.
Mary, very nice works with autistic children and is irish.
paulo who is italian and completely mental. insists on climbing a lot of things and talking in italian knowing full well nobody can understand him, before getting annoyed that noone understands him.
carlos tourguide, from peru and is cool. he is also quite small.

Anyway, went out for meal which was nice, I even managed to not faint. result. I did however leave in the first cab and get to bed by 10, when I went to sleep very very quickly.

Next morning was a coach ride to Puno in Peru (NB have used capitals this time Dad, but will now go back to little letters as is lots of effort holding down both keys. have become dangerously nonchalant about such things these days), which involved an early start and a drive out of La Paz. I thought traffic was bad in the city, but I hadnt seen anything. Was ridiculous, had three "lanes" (no markings) going our way, however when we reached a blockade of bolivian people across the road, filling up bottles of gas. An odd place to do this, which resulted in the three lanes just turning around and trying to go the other way. This was tricky with the oncoming traffic, however the traditional bolivian technique of beeping your horn really often did absolutely nothing to help, and so we resorted to forcing our way past angry people. This was until we got to a broken part of the central reservation (line of shrubs), whereupon we just drove over it and went the other way. This was brilliant fun if slightly scary.

Drive up to Lake Titikaka (bolivian side) was incredible- these people really dont have anything, the villages were like tiny slums with the women sitting outside knitting (wearing the traditional gear complete with bowler hats) or trying to sell bits of food at the roadside, or coming alongside the bus to offer corn or fruit drinks. Was the first time i'd properly stopped just thinking like a tourist and was quite unsettling.

Anyway, got to the point of crossing lake, when our bus went first in a (barely floating) little raft thing, then us in a wooden boat. Apparently things sink quite a lot there. Next stop was border to peru. Crossed that and took some HILARIOUS photos of me on both sides.

Got to puno, checked into hotel (sharing this time with colin), then went out for a look in town, bought a finger puppet from a small child and a novelty tshirt, then dinner (alpaca, like a goat. was nice) before few driniks in a cool bar in town, and bed.

This brings me to yesterday, which was amazing, as was today.

Up early and onto push-bike taxi thing to get to port. Bought gifts for family we were staying with that night on an island called tanquiri (i think) which is 3 hours on a boat into the middle of lake titicaca. titicaca is very high (3800m above sea level), and this island was higher still. The boat took a ferry long time to get there.

Got to island, haveing learnt some (ie virtually no) Quecha, the language they rather inconveniently spoke. Apparently they also spoke some spanish. This was very helpful as I could now ask where the toilet was, and if they could please bring the bill.

Turned out I was staying with Paulo (who speaks spanish) in the house of Celia and her daughter and mother. We met them at the port on the island and walked up a hill to her house, which i cant really describe very well, have to look at photos, but was incredibly basic, no electricity, and they cooked over a wooden stove in the kitchen house (seperate building) under candlelight. not very good at description but was pretty amazing, and the view was spec. anyway, once we'd been shown in to the house we went up about halfway up this mountain (worth mentioning that by this point I was absolutely knackered and panting. very very stupidly high up. The purpose of getting this high up was to play a football match. ridiculous idea. decent view though.

We played for about 40 minutes, during which time I scored a goal, and the rest of the match wasnt really worth talking about, except for when paulo the italian got really arsey about losing, and started barking tatics at our team. His main complaint was the lack of mobility of the strike force (myself and colin) who were contenting ourselves with the complex task of not dying, and dealing with the lungburn. whilst wearing the multicoloured silly hats that our host families had given us for the following hike even chuffing further up.

The hike was to the temple of the mother earth, and was up another big hill. two people fainted, however I managed to avoid it this time, even though after the football something had posessed me to play basketball for another 15 minutes. Took lots of photos which can be found here.... Morephotos

Back to house for dinner cooked on aforementioned very traditional oven. had soup to start and then some rice and potato thing, both very nice. After dinner showed them some photos of family and stuff i had with me on my ipod (they didnt even have a charger. honestly.) which she liked, I could tell because she was smiling as she said a lot of words I didnt understand. this happened a lot.

we were then dressed in our traditional kit (poncho and silly hat) and taken (up the big hill again) to the dance. this was hilarious as I was about twice the height of any of the women, and whenever they twirled me round I got my head stuck in the poncho and they all laughed at me. Also the dances were exhausting, and we were being run ragged by these tiny little women who didnt seem to ever want to stop running around, ever.

Was by then very very tired, so went back to the house for a good sleep in my hobbit bed, which stopped around about my shins.

Next morning was a breakfast of pancakes and jam before heading to the port to carry on the trip. Said goodbye to celia, and got a good two hours sunburning in before we got to the floating islands. not even going to describe these, save to say that they are literally floating reed islands 2m thick, which people live on still, and have reed huts and boats etc. Absolutely incredible place that the photos can describe better than i can. they even had a separate little island for guinea pigs. I am going to eat a guinea pig soon. tried some the other night, really quite tasty a bit like duck. they are served with their head teeth and claws still on, and look a bit like they've been run over.

Anyway.... bought a little mini reed boat, then got in a real size one and had a go at rowing it to another island. Was fun.

got real boat back to mainland then, and gave dirty laundry to hotel staff. later today they gave it back washed and ironed and folded in 4 hours for 2 pounds. result.

Afternoon was taken up with visit to inca and pre-inca burial site (know lots about this but will tell upon asking as isnt that exciting). Took more photos. Got back to hotel and then wandered into town to sort photos onto cds. en route stopped to buy some chicken from a shop. Went to main square in town to eat chicken (and chips), when everyone started laughing at us. Have been thinking about why all afternoon, and after asking carlos the guide it turns out everone was laughing at us because we just looked funny. Was bizarre. Literally, groups of peruvians would be pointing and laughing. A girl was walking past with her boyfriend, and actually stopped him so he could turn round and laugh at us as well. Then when we'd finished eating one of the guys who had been laughing at us came and asked for our leftovers, which was very sad and at the same time, if he'd wanted our food, he shouldnt have laughed. Double standards.

Back at hotel for briefing then out for dinner then here to write this. Next week involves amazon and inca trail. This will be hard to write about. Bedtime now as we have to leave tomorrow at half seven. Again.

Fingers hurt now.....

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