After a well-deserved party in Cuzco we left for Puno and Lake Titicaca which was our last stop before the trip ended in La Paz. Puno was a boring city. It wasn't very pretty either, as they have a stupid rule here saying if you don't finish building your house (i.e paint it) you don't have to pay tax for it. So you can imagine how pretty all the houses looked...
We spent the afternoon shopping for our hostfamily, having dinner and watching Germany kick some English ass in the world championships.
The next morning we boarded our boat and set sail for Taquile, the first island we were to visit. Lake Titicaca is really beautiful, it's the largest lake in South America and one of the highest navigable ones in the world, sitting at 3800 meters above sealevel. The trip to Taquile took about three hours. We walked across the island and looked around the main square before we had lunch. I'm glad I had my big lense, as I got to take some sneaky pictures of the locals ;)
After lunch we carried on towards Iquitos, where we were spending the night at a local family's house. We were met by the families when we arrived, and they played music for us while we walked up to the school. We were assigned to our host-mum or -dad, before we played some football. Great fun, but very tiring running around as we were so high up! After that we walked up to our house, I was sharing a room with Maxa and Cyndi. We dumped our stuff and went to the kitchen/living room which was actually a house by itself. Unfortunately none of us speak very much spanish, so we tried to communicate by gesticulating and pointing. I managed to say I was from Norway and was 25 years old and that was about it. But our family was really nice so there was a lot of laughter in spite of not managing to communicate properly. We helped prepare dinner by peeling and cutting potatoes. Then the youngest girl came home, and showed us her drawingbook, where we drew our self-portraits among other things. Dinner was delicious, and we all rolled out afterwards.
Then it was time to get dressed up and go dancing! Our mum and the three daughters came to our room with clothes, and we were dressed up in the local costume. It consisted of four skirts layered on top of each other, a shirt/jacket, wide belt, cloth draped over our shoulder and on top a bowler hat. We all looked beautiful! Then we were guided down to the school in the dark where we met everyone else. All the girls had the same costumes, and the boys had pink ponchos, a cocaleaf bag and broadbrimmed hat.
First the locals performed a dance for us, and then we had to dance like them. It wasn't that difficult, and it was great fun! We were at the school for about two hours dancing and watching the locals dance. We even tried to teach the young girls how to dance to Saturday Night! A lot of fun :)
The next morning it was time to say goodbye to our family and head back towards Puno. On the way we stopped at Uros, the floating islands. Very interresting, everything is made of a type of straw, even the houses and the boats! It was strange walking on the island, the straw sank down as you walked, and it was actually quite hard work! They had a pool on the island with an island on it where they kept the guinea pigs :)
Back in Puno we were even more bored than before, because it was a bank holiday and most of the shops were closed. Maxa, Alex, Dani and I found an open restaurant where we had chocolate cake and lemonade before we went to get a manicure and pedicure. It was the worst one I've ever had... The woman doing my pedicure didn't know what she was doing and was constantly asking the other woman what to do next. To top it off poor Alex and Dani got a fake 20-note as change!
The next day we took a bus to La Paz which took almost all day. In La Paz we went out for a last dinner at a very nice restaurant, and out for a drink afterwards where we also met up with Hugh, one of the guys from our Lares trek. I think I picked up something in Puno cause I was quite ill that night and the next day, so spent all morning in bed. At 2 o'clock I managed to have a shower and go sightseeing for a couple of hours. Then Maxa, Hugh and I went for dinner before we said goodbye to Maxa and met up with the others who had done the Death Road that day. Went out for one last drink with them before I went to bed and left for Trondheim the next morning.
A great trip with great people! Hope to see you all again someday :)
13 years ago