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  Puno, Peru
Wednesday, January 23, 2008

We survived!!

I suppose you got a little worried ( Tetty & Jenny!) wondering whether you were gonna read another blog from us considering we were mountain biking the so called "Road of Death" last week! Well we survived and here it is!
The "Road of Death" as its so called, wasnt bad at all, except for the waterfalls hitting the road ( the width of a car ), landslides, rain, very poor visibilty and oh yeah one car coming the other way! (they have built a new road now so cars and trucks hardly use it) The scenery was amazing. You start at aroud 4000m and descend to around 1500m a.s.l. so you can imagine the change in climate and obviously the scenery. At the top its snowing and by the time you reach the bottom ( it took us 6 hrs!) its sunny and lush. Anyway I recommend everyone who passes this way to do it, its fab and you get a free tshirt too!! haha...

I suppose I should give La Paz a mention. We stayed in a hostal called the Aventure Brew Hostal, which had its own microbrewery on site. Pretty cool, considering you got a free beer every night you stayed. Not cool, the fact that we both suffered terribly with stomach aches and ended blowing like trumpets every night!! haha... What can I say about La Paz, except that its very strange. Besides dealing with the altitude, you have to deal with car horns, gypsies, guys shouting destinations out of an abundance of different types of taxis constantly and people trying to sell you shit... well I actually loved the shit selling! I realised La Paz´s vocation and that was shopping! We shopped and shopped till we dropped!!ok maybe im exaggerating but we did pretty well...So that was it really for La Paz.

aahhhhh a spa!

Oh I might as well mention that I met my first scouser on our travels!! it was in the english pub, Ollivers Travels! haha his name was Jimmy lar!! classic!!

So anyway, following on from the mountain biking expedition, we ended up in a place called Coroico where we stayed for 2 nights. Our hostal, Sol Y Luna was set in the hills of the Bolivian jungle.Although i got bitten over 30 times, we were lucky enough to have a romantic natural hot tub in the grounds of the hostal which was amazing..Just to give you an idea of the place,there were 2 swimming pools,chillout areas and  all the cabins were dotted about the mountain side and each had their own view of the valley etc, with hammocks and outside fireplaces..unfortunately for me i failed as a man as I tried to ignite the fire several times but to no avail. I blame not having newspaper,kindling,firelighters & coal! sorry Dad!!

Now we are in Puno, a cool Peruvian town on the edge of Lake Titicaca ( the highest largest lake in the world). We are staying with a wonderful host named Jenny ( not as wonderful as Jennymum of course!) who is treating us very well. We are sad that we are only staying one night.
Today we went to an amazing place called the Floating Islands inhabited by the tribe Los Oros. These islands are about 20mins from the mainland and are constructed by using reeds and rope which help them float. Its kinda weird as you sail on the boat through a load of reed bushes and all of a sudden you´re in the middle of a floating city. Check out the pics to see what i mean.Although its very tourist driven, (every island you hop onto, they bring out the stalls!) the people are very friendly and welcoming and even the lunch was great! Lake Titicaca is famous for its trout, so Fee and I had trout cerviche and pan fried trout respectively, yum!!!! The highlight of the journey for me though was that i got to hold a condor, well it pèrched on me.  What an amazing bird of prey although the only preying i think it was allowed to do was with its eyes. Fee wasnt too impressed with the fact it was tied to the post!!

So, here we are, about to have dinner and get an early night coz we have to catch the Inka Express tomorrow to the wonderful town of Cusco, stopping off at various landmarks on the way, i think its an old fogey tour but hey we´re getting old......

n.b. my phone contract has now terminated so please text fee if need be on 07877031669.  
x

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

Condorman!!!	Fee lazing in the sun at Coroico	fee rowing to the floating islands	geared up for the "road of death"
guy, off round the bend..	guys attempt at getting in Nat Geographic!	La Paz in all its glory	navigation through landslide!
we survived! (looking a little dishevelled)

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