Lake Titicaca and more...

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Puno, Peru: Puno is the main town on the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca. We liked this town quite a bit even though it downpoured every night. On Sunday there was a folklorico music festival which entailed what seemed like hundreds of folklore groups from all over the province playing music and dancing in a parade that lasted from 10am until it rained at about 7pm. It was pretty exciting to see young and old, traditional and more modern all rocking out in the streets like that.

We also saw a Sunday matinee of a really terrible Peruvian movie that we don't recommend. Still, it was pretty interesting to see how they pulled it off--stark but grand theater with wooden floors and curtains, dvd player and projector, started about 40 minutes late, etc.

The last day we did the obligatory boat tour of two islands. 1) Uros are the 42 or so floating artificial islands made of reeds and inhabited by Aymara people. This is a very touristy but still interesting visit where the President of the island we visitied, Jose, explained about how they make the islands, how they barter with the reeds, fish, birds and eggs to get the other materials they need, and how they organize themselves--some islands have PresidentAs! Most interesting to us were the solar panels they had rigged up! 2) Taquile is a large island of Quechua inhabitants and they have been recognized by UNESCO for their textiles. We met some cool pilots--one from Denmark and one from Holland--that John got to talk soccer/futbol with.

Copacabana, Bolivia: This was a much smaller, low-key, touristy beach-type town with no banks or ATMs. We checked out the Moorish style cathedral and all, but mostly we just hung out and tried to eat some vegetables--it had been a while! We did head out to Isla del Sol, hiked across it, and stayed overnight. We nicknamed it Donkey Island because there sure were a lot of them making a lot of noise. The views from our hostal balcony of the sparkling blue water really made our afternoon. Then we played a rummy tournament while we waited for our dinner. We have decided to keep a lifelong rummy score and so far Josie has a 500 point deficit to make up! On the boat ride back we met some cool, politically progressive Argentinians and had a good talk with them. We're going to try to meet up with them when we're in Buenos Aires (they live just outside).

It's funny how similar Bolivia and Peru are--same food, same handicrafts, same type of Spanish, etc. It was really a seamless transition except for the somewhat hairy border crossing.

La Paz, Bolivia: We arrived here Friday night and had a little trouble finding a place to stay in our price range ($10 or under!). It's the first time we have a shared bathroom, which, after 4 weeks is saying something about the luxury we've become accustomed to. 2009 is the 200 year anniversary of Bolivia's independence from Spain and there are banners everywhere about this.

Yesterday was the Feria de las Alasitas. We headed into the eye of the storm in hopes of seeing President Evo Morales as we were told he would be there. We squeezed right up there but he didn't show--something about being in Congress, a guy told us. For Las Alasitas indigenous and mestizo people alike buy miniatures of things they want in the coming year--houses, cars, money, down to the details of which truck they want. Then they burn the stuff in a ¨koa¨, a little fire, and do a ceremony to make all this come true for them. The whole city was full of people, full of little fires and full of incense smell. It was funny because all the sellers were yelling ¨Cars, houses, dollars, passports!¨but they meant the little miniatures😊

Last night we saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and cried our eyes out. We got out of the theater at 12:45am and walked back to our hostal. In contrast to how busy it was during the day, it was so empty of people and cars that we could walk down the middle of the street. It was like being in a zombie movie or something--just eerie considering how crazy La Paz usually is. Luckily they were quite a few police around.

Today almost everything is closed because it's Sunday but also because everyone is voting for (or against) the referendum of the new Constitution. That's why there are 8000 police in La Paz this weekend. We picked up a copy of the proposed Constitution and it's quite comprehensive with a lot of details about rights for indigenous people, rights to a clean environment, etc. Around here they are for it (especially according to all the graffiti we saw on the way here), but not so in the east and the Amazon. We haven't really felt any anti-American sentiment so far although we don't exactly get overwhelming excitement for our country either. It's kind of luke warm. People don't bring up Obama or anything (we do sometimes!).

Tomorrow we're off to Cochabama--hopefully, we don't have tickets or anything yet😊

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Photos

Isla del Sol
A very rocky island

Isla del Sol 3
A closeup of the terrain

Isla del Sol 4
Inca ruins