Youth club in Lake Titicaca

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At 7.30am we got on our bus, luckily finding a cab to the bus station big enough for four girls and their bags. Why does my bag keep getting bigger?!

The first few hours we managed to catch up on some sleep and arrived in Puno mid afternoon, catching a cab to our hostel. It was freeeeeeeeeeezing! We were warned it would be a bit chilly but seriously, leggings, trousers, vests, T-Shirts, jumpers, hats and scarves and we were still cold. Again, the town was at about 3800m so that would explain it.

No sooner had we arrived at our hostal, a well placed tour lady showed up with a 2 day tour to the Lake, including an overnight stay. It sounded perfect, so after an evening of copious tea drinking and seeing how many pairs of socks I could fit on, we headed off the next morning to catch our boat.

The boat wasn´t exactly Galapagos standard and worryingly took a few goes to get going but it all seemed better when our tour guide made us introduce ourselves and applause each other´s countries.

After 3 hours we arrived at the Isla Floatenes - amazing little islands built using reeds that grow from the water. They were created by the Uros people to escaple the Collas and the Incas - and although apparently still inhabited, I´m suspicious if that´s just for show for us tourists. Nevertheless, they´re not anything like we´ve seen before. We were shown how the islands were built, told about the traditional dress, sung to by the women and their children and even took a trip in a boat made out of the reeds around the islands. We did have a giggle at one girl who seriously claimed that her "rowing skills" would be useful. After, we watched a couple of little girls play with the recently caught fish, pretty similar to how I used to play with Sylvanian families. Let´s say there weren´t many alive fish after the game had finished.

Later, we headed to Isla Amantani, which was to be our overnight stay. We were greeted by our families and then headed up to the house. I was half expecting a reed house with a bed of straw, but actually we had a pretty decent room for the four of us and even a toilet. The luxuries! We ate a typical lunch in a very basic kitchen - they don´t eat meat on the island so lunch was an array of odd shaped potatos and good old rice and cheese.

That afternoon, we headed to the sports field where our tour guide told us about plants that they use, one which they use the berry to paint nails with and we climbed a mountain / hill thing that has some kind of spiritual meaning. It took us about 45 mins to climb the mountain / hill thing. All of the tourists were huffing and puffing because of the altitude and were put to shame by the locals who were overtaking us from all sides. We watched sunset (5.17pm) to be exact and then headed back down to our house for dinner.

That evening we were invited to the local´s dance with a twist. The twist being, we were to dress up in local clothing. Big BIG colourful skirts, a white embroided top, a big rainbow waist band and even a manta (a long black headscarf). We did look like tits! But it was hilarious.

We turned up at the village hall and laughed at everyone else looking like tits too. People were already up and about dancing and I couldn´t help thinking that it resemmbled some sort of youth club, except, instead of fizzy cola bottles being sold from a fold up table, they sold beer. In true English style we shared a beer before beginning to contemplate dancing but soon found ourselves running around the hall holding hands with the locals (dancing apparently) getting extremely dizzy. It was exhausting and slightly surreal. The finale, was watching the locals do their own dance with flags and masks.

The next day we headed to Isla Talquina. We were told about the clothing they wore where certain hats and colours signify marital status and had lunch at a designated spot. Apparently the islanders choose where the tourists eat and everything is at a set price. Then we jumped on a boat to head back to Puno passing a number of fires where they had decided to burn old Isla Floatenes.

That evening we had dinner with Marek from Poland and tried our first Alpaca steak.

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