Lake Titicaca

So we had to get out of the hostel by 2. We decided to go down to the bus station as we were getting an overnight bus to lake Titicaca that night. We tried to find somewhere to leave our bags but we couldn't. No one recognised the word that was in my dictionary for left luggage. So in the end we took our bags and did some souvenir shopping along with getting all our soaking clothes from the Inca trail washed. Once we had everything sorted we got food and waited for our bus. We got into Puno at half 4 and met someone from the tour company who took us to a hostel as the tour started at 7. At 7 we got onto a boat on the lake. It was very wet so the tour guide said we couldn't get to the reed islands in this weather. He was going to take us to an island called Taquila and hopefully the weather would clear up by the afternoon. On the Taquila we walked around a very hilly island. We got a great view of the lake and got some lovely lunch and learned all about the customs of the people on the island. They were very bright clothes and mostly do weaving and knitting. By lunch the weather was stone splitting. We were so happy we were going to get to go see the reed islands. So we headed off to them in a boat. When we got there the president of the island met us and helped the tour guide explain how the islands were made. She even had sample reed blocks and strings so show us how they tie together all the blocks of reeds to make islands. Then all the people in the village took members of the tour into their house to show them how they lived. They only sleep in their houses and spend all other time away from them. They are descendants of pre Inca tribes. They use solar panels and energy efficient bulbs to light their houses and its the only electricity. Their houses and boats are all made out of reeds. They even eat the reeds. They only hunt once a week for food and they are the only people allowed hunt in the area. The can fish every day though. There is a school and a medical centre on the island though they don't use the medical centre. The lake only has .01% pollution. Then they sang us songs from the island and then we had to all sing them songs. They were really welcoming people and we even got to get rowed to the final island on one of their reed boats. They have a hotel and bar on the last island as it was a bit bigger and tourist orientated then the little island we started on. It was a really interesting day. We got dinner and Brian got to eat Alpaca meat to get him closer to his goal of eating 30 different none fish animals.

Later we got another overnight bus back to Cucso. We spent the day wander Cusco and got some great food in a place called Jack's cafe. We saw the Inca museum which was nice but wasn't very consistent with what it translated and didn't translate. We then stopped in the highest Irish pub in the world for a drink. Finally we got on the bus to take us back to Lima. It was a 21 hour journey.