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Published: June 14th 2009
I´ll try to finish up Lake Titikaka quickly.
Dinner was amazing. Gladys spoke maybe 20 words of English, Spanish, and their local language. Her neice spoke a little bit of Spanish as well. Between Lisa and I, we used French (some of the words are similar), our limited knowledge of Spanish, and Enlgish to communicate with Gladys and her neice. We were able to talk about the sports we play, our age, and where we were from.
Our dinner consisted of a vegetable soup with potatoes, and a rice dish with more potatoes and vegetables. Both were really good.
Our local tour guide gave us a sheet with a few words in english, spanish and their local language. We made an attempt to Gladys that the meal was really good in their native language, but I guess we got that all wrong.
After dinner we went back to our room to get ready for the dance festival. Gladys and her mother came up with us with some of their clothes, and helped dress us in their native clothing. All of the women must be around 5 foot so we all laughed at me wearing their skirts since they were so much shorter. Lisa, Glayds, and I then went to the festival. The festival consisted of all of the other expats on their homestays, the homestay families, and a group of men playing music. We did a few different dances over 2 hours. Most of the dances involved everyone being in a circle and doing different movements in both directions. Our local guide took pictures of us while we danced, and even tried to make a short video on my camera.
The dance festival ended around 10, and we were all exhausted. Our homestay families led us back to their houses, and we all went to sleep. There is no heat in the rooms so we must have had 3 or 5 heavy blankets on us. The pillows were also rock hard. I guess we are all spoiled at home with our nice feather pillows.
We woke up the next morning around 7am. It was nice to sit up in bed, and be able to see Lake Titikaka out the window. Gladys came upstairs to our room shortly after, and gave us a bucket of warm water to wash our face. We quickly packed up our things, and met Gladys downstairs for breakfast. Lisa and I were both really curious to see what breakfast would be. To our surprise, she made us pancakes. They aren´t quite like Bisquick pancakes from the states, but they were still really tastey.
After breakfast we walked down the hill to our boat around 8. We all took pictures with our homestay families, and boarded our boat.
We traveled about 3 hours to the Uros islands. These islands are really interesting because they are floating islands. The islands are made out of reeds that grow in the surrounding areas. Our local guide explained to us how the islands are created. It takes several years to create a new island. We were able to tour one of the smaller islands, as well as tour their houses/huts. There were several smaller islands in the cluster. They told us they even had a school for the younger children. The high school is on the mainland.
We also took a short boat ride made out of the reeds around the islands as well. I really hope the pictures really show how interesting these islands were.
After touring the islands for an hour or so we returned to Puno on the mainland. We heard that there were going to be strikes the following day so our tour guide told us we would be leaving for Cusco in a few hours by private bus. We voted on a private bus instead of the local bus. It cost us about $5.00 more. The local buses I saw reminded me a bit of Ghana, and Nigeria; people were stuffed into the buses, and occasionaly a few seemed to be hanging a bit out the window.
The private bus also allowed us to have a few bathroom breaks on the way to Cusco, which we all seemed to need.
Our bus ride to Cusco was about 6 hours. We arrived around 9:30 pm. Our whole tour group was exhasuted so after a quick snack we all went to bed eager to explore Cusco the following day.
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Grant
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Lake Titikaka
Very interesting comments on your trip around the lake. Did you learn what the name of the lake means? I assume most of the people derived their living from fishing - is this right? What are the other people like on your tour - sounds like you don't have that much contact with them, since you and Lisa are mainly staying separately. Keep up the journal - its fascinating.