Discovering middle earth

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We spent two nights in Lima were we met up with our tour group. We wont bore you with the details of sighting seeing - basically saw churchs, public squares, ghettos and the spanish inquestion building (very scary forms of torture).

From Lima we got a flight to Puno with our group. Puno is at a high altitude so it took us about a day to adjust. The next day we set off to explore the wonders of Lake Titicaca. To place this in context, it South America´s largest lake and the world´s largest lake above 2000m. I don´t think we can really do it justice with words, it is absolutely huge and set between the andes and the Bolivian capital of La Paz.

After boarding the boat, the first stop was the reed islands - so called because the islands are floating and they are made entirely with reeds. They are about 2m thick and about 30m long and every two weeks they have to add to the foundation to keep it from sinking. There is a little community of reed islands which have exisited since pre-inca times. We visited two of the islands where the ladies sold their wooven goods. We also saw that they had a space for farming trout and guinea pig on the reed islands.

Next we travelled to Taquile were we went for a walk across the island for lunch. The walk was our first taste of dealing with steep inclines at a high altitute - not too bad but we were constantly breathing deeply in an attempt to get enough oxygen into our lungs.

Our last stop for the day was the Island of Amantani where we were greeted by our hosts for the home stay. It was just like the shire but without gandalf. We walkd for about 40 minutes up hill to get to the home of our host, Anna. After settling in Bryce joined in with a game of soccer - the locals vs the gringos (foreingers). However, Bryce´s position was quite tactical as he was tagged into the Peruvian team as a decoy and consequently confused the hell out of the opposition who had assumed that he was on their side.

We then had dinner with our host family and attempted to converse with them however spanish was their second language and so we did struggle a little! After dinner, we partied lake titicaca style!

The host family dressed us in traditional clothes and we head down to the community centre for a good old fashioned shin-dig! All the gringos had been dressed up and there were two bands who played local music alternatively. The dancing was interesting. At one stage there was a conga line but I am happy to report that there was no nut bush at any stage!

We´re back in Puno now and heading onto Cusco tomorrow to start the inca trail on Sunday - wish us luck!

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Photos

Anti-protest measures - Peruvian Style
Don't mess with the authorities if you are not prepared to get wet!

The view from our room
Overlooking the soccer field and the community centre to lake titicaca

The kitchen of our host family
The kitchen is seperated from the bedrooms and is a very basic room with a fire place and a table. The toilet is behind the kitchen...

Lady's man
It must be the poncho!

Comments

[Ren Carl]

How exciting!
Bryce, you are looking distinctly very at home in your Homer Simpson style mou-mou and hat ensemble. Sounds like you guys are having an amazing trip, keep up the blogs!