Adventures on the Sacred Lake

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  Taquile, Peru
Sunday, January 7, 2007

Trip from Puno to Lake Titicaca.
We took bike limos (tuk-tuks) from the hotel to our 1950's boat for the 3 hour boat trip across Lake Titicaca to the beautiful island of Taquile.  Life there continues as it has done for hundreds of years with fishing and agriculture being pretty much the only forms of income.  Apart from tourism of course.  It's strange to see mud-brick houses with solar panels and TVs.  It was hard walking up the hill at high altitude but the scenery was amazing (pictures are coming soon - we are having trouble finding a place with good image manipulation programs) and we even had great fish and chips at the top.  Just goes to show you can't get that far away from home.  We had a gorgeous walk down to the shore again and we bought beautiful wee earrings for Sara.
Back on the boat it was another hour to Amantani island at 4000m!  It was getting easier to walk up hills and we met our families and were taken to their houses where we would spend the night

01 - Carlos, our limo driver.

.  A footie game was arranged between our GAP group and another GAP group and at this altitude you can forget about lighting runs down the wings.  After an hour and a lot of exhaustion we came out on top and Tony was named the official man of the match.  The fact that he was our goalie and managed to score 2 goals probably played a part in this.  Sara played a great game taking on 7 foot men who just couldn't get past her tackles and she even got a cheer from the opposite team for an excellent block. She's just the best wife in the world - beautiful and great at football!  As you can probably tell we are feeling much better and are ready for anything.  Thanks to all who sent their well wishes, even Mark you cheeky bugger.
It gets very dark here at night so the family took us back for a traditional dinner which was a speedy affair but good grub.  After dinner we were bedecked in local garb (Tony looks hot in a poncho) and went out for a big community dance in which our arms were nearly torn off us.  Great fun!  But soon the day caught us up and we headed to bed.
We were up again at 6 to get the boat to the floating reed islands.  We visited Uros island and were given demonstrations of how their islands work and what the islanders do.  We even got a ride on a reed boat.  It's a mad place as you'll see in the pics and EVERYTHING is made out of reed.  Even the people!
After that back to Puno for a lazy afternoon wandering the streets and another big dinner.  Our guide is fond of good food and knows all the best places to go.

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02 - Taquile island	03 - A path to nowhere	04 - Us with Jake and Quy	05 - Avast!
06 - The high-altitude football team	07 - Our guide on Amantani island	08 - That's a serious poncho!	09 - "So, you really are made of reed?"
10 - Keeping the diary up to date	11 - Approaching the reed islands ... OF DOOM!	12 - Having a reedy good time	13 - Staring at the hands reed-metal style!
14 - There's a dragon on the starboard bow!	15 - It's comming right for us!!!

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