Heading from Cuzco to La Paz....

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I´m so far behind on this blog, I am currently in Uyuni in the south of Bolivia and tonight I am getting on a train to Villazon to cross the border to Argentina and so far I have only written up until Machu Picchu which was.....I can´t even remember, but was about 3 weeks ago i think????

Ok so having come down from the high of being at Machu Picchu i spent a couple of days chilling out in Cuzco, shopping, had a ¨pedicure¨ from a girl touting on the street and getting lots of sleep. Most of the tour group had gone to the jungle but as i wanted to do this in Bolivia I opted out. Once they were back after two days we headed straight for Puno on a bus. We were going to be based here whilst visiting Lake Titikaka. Puno was an ok town, before we set off for Lake titikaka, a few of us had a night out drinking and dancing which was fun that night but not so fun the next morning when we had to get up to go on a boat. I actually felt ok but the two Aussie boys, Zhan and Tai didn´t make it and had to spent that night in Puno without us. Tha boat journey was good, we spent a couple of hours getting to some reed islands where communities of native people live. The islands are amazing, they are made of layers of reeds collected from the lake and then the huts they live in are made from reeds too!! The islands are also tiny so the people that live on them are quite large as they don´t get any exercise apart from when they take their reed boat to market in Puno maybe once a week! Having looked around one of the islands (which took about 5 minutes) and had a demonstration by our guide about the way they live, we headed to the island we would be spending the night on. It was not a reed island but in the middle of Lake Titikaka and a huge amount bigger. Although Titikaka is not the biggest Lake in the world it can´t be far off as it is massive, it does have the claim to fame of being the highest Lake in the world though!

We arrived on the island to be greeted by the families we were staying with over night. The local language is Ketchuia (not sure of the spelling) so my little spanish was no good here! I was staying with a family with my tour buddy Andrea. We had to walk up a very steep hill to get the the hut and i still wasn´t used to the latitude so it was tough. The wife of the family took us, she had four children ranging from 1 to 10 years and although we had food for them we wished we had bought some books and pencils for the children as they were so cute. We were given a late lunch of soup followed by potatoes (2 types) and egg. In the afternoon there was a game of football, locals v gringos and then home for more soup, potatoes and pasta. Their diet doesn´t contain much veg as they don´t grow it on the island but a lot of potatoes of different varieties to make up for it! in Peru apparently there is over 3000 varieties of potato (of a figure near to that)! In the evening we were dressed up in the local dress, it is really cold on the island so I was glad of the extra layers. They then took us to the local hall were we had to dance with the locals to the local panpipe band (seems funny thinking about it now but at the time seemed quite normal)!!
It was a good experience staying with the family, they live very basically, our family had not running water or electricity but did have an outside toilet! The hut where we ate is the kitchen, they store their food there and the wife cooks on a stove in the corner. There was a little table in the corner where we ate and a small window over looking the water. They had a small patch of soil for growing potatoes I presume and two other huts, one where we slept and the other for the family to sleep. The wife was definately supermum as when she served us dinner she was cooking at the stove, boiling water for us to have with herbs, feeding the baby on her lap and eating herself (sat on a log by the stove).

The next day we were seen to the boat by the wife and headed back to Puno via another island for lunch. One more night in Puno and then we were on a bus to La Paz in Bolivia. The bus journey was pretty dull apart from when we had to get off the bus and get on a small motor boat to cross part of Lake Titikaka, the bus got it´s own boat which was a flat boat that didn´t look strong enough to carry us let alone the bus, but it made it! We arrived in La Paz late so it looked pretty nice heading over the hill with all the lights of the city. We had an orientation tour by our tour leader of the area we were staying in and it was a pretty interesting place, not the nicest part of town but that made it more interesting! There were lots of markets, the witches market was definately one to explore a bit more when we had some free time!

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