Lake Titi and La Pazzz

---

Out of Cusco we headed straight for Lake Titicaca and began our journey in Puno. We weren´t planning to stay on the Peru side of Lake Titicaca, as other travellers had advised us that the Bolivian side is much nicer however after a long bus ride we finally listened to one of the bus station badgerer´s about hostels and tours and booked a reed island tour that afternoon with plans to cross the boarder the next day.

A complete tourist attraction, the reed islands or Islas Flotantes were well worth the freezing cold boat ride. With a tour group the three of us piled into a small boat, this time it wasn´t budget style and another boat didn´t have to tow us. After recieving information from our tour guide we climbed onto the roof of the boat as we headed into the area of the Uros floating islands. An amazing sight as the islands were made of torta reeds that had been piled up for centuries, in an effort to isolate their population from the Incas. From what we saw there are still houses and boats made of the reeds, even a hotel that tourists can stay in, however the Uros people appear to now live in regular houses built behind the reed houses set up for tourists, although a few of the reed houses had solar panels and tele inside ... all the comforts of home. Besides the tourist aspect it was totally worth the trip and Puno should be a destination for anyone heading to Lake Titicaca.

Our boarder crossing into Bolivia proved much easier then into Peru, as the exit and entrance stamp offices were only about 100 meters apart instead of a taxi ride at night. After entering Bolivia we headed to the Bolivian Lake Titicaca town of Copacabana. Copacabana is a beautiful tourist town, tons of artisans and more South American tourists then we have seen yet. The town was pretty busy with a lot of color and much much warmer then Puno. We decided to catch a two hour boat ride to Isla del Sol with the plans to stay the night on the island and see some of the Inca ruins. Unfortunatly for us when we got to the island and hoofed it up what seemed like another million stairs to the village of Yumani we found a hostel and all the local people celebrating a town fiesta. With it being a small town everything was closed and the island proved not to be as interesting as we had hoped while we ate pringles and bananas for dinner in our hostel. In the morning after an ohh so interesting night we decided to head back to Copacabana and on to La Paz ... it seemed we had a case of "the been there done that" with the ruins. A beautiful island though, worth the day trip on the boat but not an overnight stay.

Back to the Loki, La Paz style, just in time for New Years!!! For us and our Victoria style of party think of our extreme happiness when we found out it was a costume party!!! We love costumes!!! It only took us about thirty seconds to steal a costume idea from Jill´s sister, Bry, and we decided to dress as Pacena´s, The Bolivian beer brand. We hit the streets immediatly to get together a costume that in the end consisted of beautiful red wigs with over the top "2008" headbands, shiny gold fabric to look like beer and Pacena labels ... not forgetting the body sparkles. Even though we didn´t 100% look like beer bottles it was a great new years complete with dressing Michael up in a gold dress and red wig, fire works inside and out and lots of beer and happy 08´s. The day after New Years, surprisingly not hungover we headed out to the streets of La Paz to get a look at the city instead of madly searching for costume supplies ... unfortunatly everything was closed (duh) so we internetted and read and then went to a movie. ´The Golden Compass´in english,,, it was a great movie!!!

With things open on the 2nd we searched the city for tours trying to decided between a pampas jungle tour and the salt flats ... our ultimate decision was the salt flats!!! We also hit the Witch´s market and Black Market where we bought enough DVD´s to satisfy almost anyone, here´s hoping they work at home! The Witch´s Market is a must in La Paz, it only takes a few minutes but to see the rena´s hollowed out and sewn back together as well as the llama fetus´is well worth the trip!! There are also enough scents and herbs to cure just about everything from menopause to heartbreak.

---