Libertador Hotel Puno

... islands on Lake Titicaca for an Island stay . We visit the Uros floating islands made of reeds (people do actually still live on these islands, only now with some solar energy for help) , on route to Amantani Island for our overnight stay. We stayed with a lovely local family. They didnt have running water (but a very big clean fresh water lake) or electricity but they made us some really good food! They dont speak spanish here, they speak quechan, their native language. We ...

... the sun go down and then headed back down the hill for dinner with our families. We had a nice rice and vegetable dish and chatted to Selma again.. she was asking all about our families and what we did etc... we got onto the conversation about parents, and I talked about mum... she then opened up to us about a health problem she has with her heart... I wont go into too much detail but she got quite upset, it was really sad...a little awkward but heart renching.

After dinner ...

... setre goinfre, on va se balader du cote du marche sur les rives du lac titicaca: a premiere vue, ce nest às terrible du tout, sale et odorant! mais on va vite decouvrir un autre aspect de ce lac legendaire!
on decide au dernier moment de partir pour la ville de Sillusatni situe a envrion un heure de route.
et la, cest vraiment le pied, cest calme, reposant et en plus splendide! les ruines en elles memes ns intersse peu (ce sont des ...

Returning from the jungle around noon, we headed to Maximo Nivel (to repack for Lake Titicaca). Talk about going from one extreme to another…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.

We left at 10pm on the overnight bus to Puno.

WARNING: May cause increased blood pressure and ...

... majestic to say the least; they`re large with a massive wingspan and glide effortlessly on the air currents as they navigate the canyon. Apparently they live to the age of 80 which is amazing for a bird. Sometimes one would swoop down over everybody, sometimes a family would all fly across the canyon together. I reckon they we were showing off to be honest; they probably know how famous they are. We spent about an hour taking photos, trying our best to get good photos of the ...

... as a Puma and the stern a fish tail.

Next we go to Isla Traquila and I ask my guide to help me find a local to stay the night with. She introduced me to a rather round native named Pablo. Before I go to his place we eat a decent lunch with again Trout but much better than last night's. My room has 2 full beds,
solid walls, and a lovely outhouse -- of course no heat or electricity but for full board (with ...

... or 5 families living on each of the two islands we visited and it was especially interesting to hear that they will cut an island in two if families have unresolved disputes - apparently this happens a couple of times a year on average! The traditional reed boats were really impressive (check out a couple of the photos), originally used to transport people and goods around the lake, they are now used to transport tourists between the islands. The ...

... evening we had our first time to look around a Peruvian village and were very pleased to see that we had finally reached a place where guinea pig is a firm favorite on any menu, that and alpaca and trout dishes are the local delicacies here. Feeling even braver than that though we decided to head away from any of the tourist strips and into the local backstreets where we were much more likely to get a cheap feed. We came across a busy little locals ...

... town and head straight to Arequipa. When we stopped at Juliaca, more Spanish verbal abuse happens with the new conductor and the Peruvian passengers. Apparently, some of the Peruvian passengers wanted to be dropped off at the bus terminal and not where we were situated. We had stopped at some street in the city to do the transfer of Puma passengers that were headed to Arequipa. **** it was annoying. After about 20 more minutes, we were ...