Puno

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After a night bus from Cusco, we arrived in Puno very early in the morning around 4:30am. We hung out at the bus station for about 15 minutes, just enough time to catch a tout offering a tour of the floating islands and a "friend" who has a hostel. We hopped in a cab and were off to the hostel. After about an hour nap, we were up and ready to head to the floating island tour!

We headed down to the docks at Lake Titicaca - the largest lake in South America and at 3800m altitude, the highest commercially navigable lake in the world. Hopped on a boat and off we went to Uros Islands. The Uros Islands are a bunch of man made islands constructed of reeds. Everything on the islands were constructed of the reeds as well - huts, watch towers, boats, etc. The tour was a bit odd, and the "locals" on the island were obviously a tad exploited, they put on big show for you and sing you songs, etc. Awkward.

Next we hopped back on our boat and headed to Taquile Island. It was a couple hours later that we arrived to the Island. We walked along a nice little path with good views of the lake until we reached the center where, SURPRISE!, there was a parade!! There has been probably about a hundred parades a day since we have arrived in Peru, from preschoolers 7 am band/parade practices in Santa Teresa to full blown Independence Day celebrations. We had lunch at the center square and then headed back out to the docks to grab the boat back to Puno.

We booked a bus back to Lima for the following day. We thought that we would be the only people staying in Puno, and it did appear that we were the only people staying in our hostel, but when we headed out to the main touristy street there was actually quite a few people out and about. It was still a small sketchy town but still had some cute character. Other than the tour tho, there was really nothing to do in Puno and we wasted the day away in a restaurant with Wifi until it was time to grab our 23 hour bus back to Lima! We booked a VIP first class bus for our super long bus ride and it was totally worth it, huge leather seats that reclined back super far, blankets, pillows, wifi, movies, food, etc!

We are now back in Lima and back at the Trust Me hostel! Now we are just killing some time before our trusty cabbie, Carlos, picks us up for our flight back to Calgary! Can't believe our trip is over already!!! We had a great time in Peru, stay tuned for our next adventure...

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