Lago Titicaca (The Peruvian side)

Its been a long 5 months but here I am, back on the blog. It's good to finish things you start no?

OK, what can I say about Puno? Still at altitude and still pretty cold. So at first glance, pretty average. But actually Puno ended up delivering in the end! On our first night we were just happy to have lukewarm showers and a relatively comfy bed. Free internet in the lobby was just a bonus. Dinner was of course the Peruvian/Bolivian staple of fried chicken, chips and rice. All on the same plate. Things start to look up when we book our tour to the islands on Lake Titicaca.

We leave early the next morning and find ourselves on a speeding boat to our first destination Uros (floating island made of reeds). Yep its just floating. So weird. Jumping off the boat onto 'island' was initially intimidating but when you land its surprisingly springy! We get a introductory talk about how the island goes about its business and meet some of the locals. The kids are super cute. I buy one of their overpriced postcards in exchange for a photo. Such a gringo. We also get to eat some of the reeds that the island is made of. Very... fibrous and looks like an over-sized shallot. Probably good for digestion. Amit doesn't mind it, but I look for an inconspicuous way to spit it out.

Next stop is Amantani Island which is an actual island this time. By this point we have made friends with some of the people on our tour, including a lovely Brazilian dude, who you will meet later in our entry about Sao Paulo (don't hold your breath on that one, its 8 weeks away from here). We get allocated a host family on the island and go with them to their house where we meet the rest of the family and have lunch with them. Here we get to eat real traditional cuisine including something that tastes just like BBQ'd haloumi cheese. Grosses everyone else out so I get seconds :). We eat in a separate room to the family which is kinda weird. It's like a tiny stone dining room without enough space to stand up straight. They serve us traditional soup first (quinoa I think its called) and then a plate of steamed veggies, mostly mountain potatoes in various colours.

After lunch we get to hike in the heat up a mountain. I'm starving after about five minutes. Also dizzy from the altitude. Kit Kat and coca tea break near the top is well received by me. We take a few photos at the top and then somehow after sunset it is freezing on the way down! We have dinner with our family in much the same awkward manner making small talk with 3 other ladies who are staying with the family. We are the only ones who don't speak more than one language. In fact they all speak at least 4. We suck.

Shortly after dinner we dress up in local outfits and traipse up to the community hall at the top of a hill in the pitch black. I repeatedly trip over my traditional dress and my hat is itchy. I am suddenly 5 years old. All the other host families bring their guests and we dance around like fools for an hour. I'm puffed after half an hour and yes I'm going to blame the altitude again. So there. No one can buy a beer because the bartender has no change but somehow no one can justify spending the equivalent of 3 AUD on a beer when we should be paying only 1 AUD. The audacity!

After an average night (including a freaky visit to the outhouse in the middle of the night) Amit spends the morning playing soccer in the tiny courtyard with the 2 sons from our family. They had to improvise with a styrofoam ball the size of a tennis ball which eventually broke. We were so sad we couldn't give them a real soccer ball but nowhere to buy it on the island. Instead we bought some basic grocery items and gave them to the mum.

We were soon on our way to the last island Tequile, where we had to climb up a ridiculous cliff in the heat again. At the top we hung out in a courtyard which felt like a playground with lots of social cliques but the locals were...well...locals. The cool kids seemed to be hanging out near the church and knitting. Strangely, on this island the men do the knitting. They also wear Noddy hats and depending on the colour you can tell if the guy is single, engaged or married. We get to eat some pretty tasty trout overlooking a spectacular view and then climb down the cliff on the other side of the island to our waiting boat.

The 6 or 7 of us that became friendly on the tour met up for a final dinner in Puno which was probably the best meal we ate there with very nice company. We swapped details and managed to run into some of these folk again on our travels which is pretty impressive when you consider how big South America is.

Next stop - Copacabana. No not the Brazilian beach. The religious pilgrimage site in Bolivia. Don't look at me like that. Its actually pretty exciting.

Flight of the Condors

We were so pumped to arrive in Arequipa, it was supposed to be another Cusco but with more street cred, less tourists maybe? Either way, when we arrived we were told by our taxi driver that it was a good thing we'd pre-booked our accommodation, as some international conference had come to town and the place was packed with tourists! not a room free in the city. So we were dismayed to discover we couldn't move when we arrived at our hostel Misty house. Dirty bathroom and dirty dirty beds. ick. First time we had to bust out the silk sleep sheets. The view was nice though.

Luckily we were planning on doing the overnight tour to Colca Canyon the next day so stayed only one night at the crappy Misty house (trip advisor review to come!) We quickly booked another couple of nights at a better hostel for our return and packed our day packs for the overnight trip.

Still kinda exhausted from the Inca Trail, we opted for the bus tour instead of the hike with 3am wake up call. Probably should have done the hike. Essentially we got in a mini van and was herded from look out to look out for photo ops. Given the Mit's propensity to instantly fall asleep on transport (I call it transport narcolepsy) we didn't really see a whole lot out of the bus.

One of the coolest bits was waking up and discovering we'd arrived at the highest point on the way to the canyon, 5000m, the highest we'd ever been. I got up too quickly, ate some marshmallows and got pretty woozy outside. Took some photos of a cute cabin which turned out to be the banos. oh well. Back in the bus and off to lunch for Peruvian buffet. Yay inca kola!

When we arrived in Chivay (a little town at the bottom of the canyon) we headed to the hot springs which were freaking awesome considering our hotel had no hot water. We had pina juice and beers while lounging in the springs. nice. Dinner was pizza, no surprices there, but with a side of sangria which really makes any meal awesome.

The relatively early start got us to the canyon in time to catch the condor action which was suprisingly frequent. I had thought we'd be waiting for an hour with binoculars, but geez those things are huge and they swoop down prettty low. Its a spectacular view. We took a short hike along the canyon where I re-discovered the macro and went nuts over the cactus.

Back on the mini bus for the 2 hour bus ride back to arequipa and our new hostel! We went in search of something different for dinner and got kinda excited by the possibility of kebab, unfortunately I was sorely disappointed by the result. We got a role with dry chicken and lettuce. No hummous, no onion, no cheese, shall I go on? Its too depressing. Amit liked it though, he claims it was the best part of Arequipa.

Shortly after we headed to local bar with offers just too good to be true. 3 vodka oranges for the price of one. The right price of 12 soles. Oh boy did I regret that 3 hours later. My final day in Arequipa was spent in and out of the bathroom. Excessive fasting makes Mel a very grumpy traveller.

The desert oasis

We took our first South American bus from Lima to Ica and then a short rickshaw (sp?) ride from the bus station to arrive at our hotel in Huacachina. The town is a tiny oasis in the middle of the desert... basically a lake with few hotels and restaurants on the banks all surrounded by huge sand dunes that span the whole perimiter.

Being in the desert it was warm and a good opportunity to laze by the pool, read and relax. I had a quick dip in the pool, despite the questionable water even if Mel wasnt game.

The second morning there was a power AND water outage in the whole town.. typical Peru. We took a sand buggy and sand boarding tour and went cruising into the desert with our crazy driver. Every time he saw a bump or dip he would gun the buggy and laugh as we bounced around in the back! We stopped at a few big hills to do sand baording or tobogganing.. i learned that sand boarding is quite different to snow boarding.. especially if you dont use a full candle stick of wax on the board each run. Needless to say there were plently of falls but at least the sand doesnt hurt as much as ice. Our final run was a tobaggan only... supposedly too steep to board and there had been broken collar bones and other assorted injuries in the past. No worries. We each had two runs, the first went smoothly but I had a big stack and my second run. Luckily Mel was on hand to catch it on video and upload it to facebook.

That night we climbed to the top of the sand dunes... very slowly. Walking uphill on sand is extremely tiring. The view at sunset was spectacular and very worth it.

The following day we went on a wine tour of Ica... this consisted of paying a cab driver a few dollars to drive us to the wineries and ask the staff to give us some free samples. The local speciality is pisco, which is very nice when made into pisco sour but more like paint thinner when drank by itself. Awful, awful stuff. We ended up buying one bottle of wine from a strange winery where the owner kept relics of stuffed animals, old clocks and war time guns and memorabilia with his wine barrels. After purchasing the wine the owner informed us that by drinking it we would definately have twins. We gave the wine away two weeks later to unsuspecting victims. (Hope you enjoyed it Ben and Clare!)

That afternoon we hired a paddle boat and cruised around the lake for a while following the ducks. It was really warm and almost tempting to go for a swim in the lake, but the murky brown colour convinced us it might be a bad idea.

The town was deprived of tourists during our stay so we had another relatively quiet night on the pisco sours and then headed to the bus station towards Arequipa.