El Buho Puno

... I reluctantly agreed and in I went. This time, however, the cold seemed to bite deeper and the altitude tired me very quickly. I could not haul myself back on board and I was getting colder and colder. The captain tried to haul me in but I was too heavy, so he enlisted one of the French guys. There was a moment when I thought it was going to become too exhausted to float. Eventually, and very slowly they hauled me back on board but not without bruising and scraping my ...

... the bay with a channel through for the boats to pass. Although we knew what to expect we were still visually awed at these grassy islands. There were dozens of them, fairly close to each other such that you could hop from one to the other, all providing huts for a small community of families. Each island had its own unique identity symbolized in some way by some statue like a bird or other animal made entirely of reed. The islands were awesome, and both Jody and Niamh were ...

... getting whacked on all day. He comes back giggling histerically like a member of the city of Crystal Meths and says he´ll give us our bus ticket later that day. This should have screamed alarm bells but we were knackered from our trip and decided to roll with it whilst we went out to meet one of the couples from the boat trip for coffee and cake (or Beer and an Empañada in my case).<br> After a feeding of pizza and Sangria at the local clay firepit, we arrive back at the ...

In Puno now.... Not much to the town but they do have the oldest boat on Lake Titicaca. Apparently they built it in England (of course!) and then shipped it to the coast of Peru and then up by Donkey to the lake (Highest in the world!). Apparently the transport guy said it wpiñd take 6 months to transport the bits by donkey.... It took 6 years (Must have been British judging by the transport system!)<br>

Returning from the jungle around noon, we headed to Maximo Nivel (to repack for Lake Titicaca). Talk about going from one extreme to another&#8230;from the hot and humid jungle to the cold and windy place of Lake Titicaca. The highest navigable lake in the world at 12,725 feet! We layered almost all the clothes we brought.<br><br>We left at 10pm on the overnight bus to Puno. <br><br>WARNING: May cause increased blood pressure and ...

... but you get really sick of it after a while. No I don´t want to pose with a falcon on my head thank you very much. The constant stopping was irritating and infantilising and made us feel trapped at the whim of something we neither had no control over nor cared about; we had seen the canyon, and had had enough of the tour atmosphere. "Now we`re stopping again so you can take some photos" - aaagh!<br><br>Finally we arrived back at Chivay and were taken to a restaurant near the ...