March 12 we said goodbye to La Paz and headed out towards Lake Titicaca and the Peruvian boarder. We left La Paz with two newbies, Lotte and Sarah, bringing our grand total of passengers up to 12–the most people we’ve had in the back of the truck to date. It’s bazarre that in a truck that is meant to seat 24, that 12 could seem overcrowded, but I guess we had just gotten used to having an absurd amount of space in back.
Anyhoo, we spent most of the morning journeying towards the boarder, and it was probably our most bizarre crossing to date. First, we had to drive through a very crowded town on market day. At points/turns, police had to get involved so we could make some tight corners, and not have any oncoming traffic. We slowly moved through the town–at times yelling out the window for people to stop trying to get into Bob’s storage down below. In terms of the trip, it really was one of the more bizarre experiences going through a massive market with Bob. Border was relatively uneventful after that, it was located at the end of the market(yup, still in the market), and had one of the longer lines, but got through unscathed.
We lunched that day on the gorgeous shores of Lake Titicaca, and introduced Lotte and Sarah to the joys of relieving oneself in the open air. It’s funny how much our barriers/personal space have gone down since the beginning of the trip, until you view it freshly through the eyes of someone just starting. Go figure.
Spent that night in Puno, busying ourselves finding presents for our host families the following night, and grabbing another round of excellent Chinese food. Yes, I know I mentioned Chinese food in the last post as well. But considering I had gone about two months without what used to be a 2-3 times a week food, I felt like I needed it. 🙂
Anyway, next morning we set off for the docks, racing there in our friendly tuktuks. Wiz and I won…though i think it helped we had the main guy who kept yelling at everyone else to follow-not pass us.
After that we boarded what might have been the slowest boat in history to get a tour of the reed islands. They’re these islands made entirely of reeds, probably only about 2 feet deep, they float on the water. When we jumped as a group of 25ish, you could seriously feel the entire island move. Slightly disconcerting. But if people have lived on similar for hundreds of years, who am I get to get frightened off? Relatively cool island where we learned how they make them, how they have to add fresh layers either weekly or monthly depending on the season. How only 10ish families can live on one, but then you can hop between. We personally took an even slower Reed boat to get between a couple of the reed islands. And…what I really liked most about these homes is that they now use solar power for some of their cooking and for varying electronic equipment. Not quite how they’ve been doing it for hundreds of years, but interesting to see how they incorporate the modern with the traditional. Pretty cool.
We then moved onto a more typical island–Isla Montana, where we met up with host families for the night. Gemma, Wiz, Claire and I all stayed with one host family. It was a lovely house, much bigger/grander than the place I stayed with my Mayan host family in Guatemala. There was proper running water, multiple bedrooms, lights, etc. We had a delicious lunch there full of some slight translation issues. Family we were staying with were Quechua(I don’t think this is even close to how it’s actually spelled), but spoke Spanish relatively well. Unfortunately, our group didn’t necessarily, which led to Claire adding some peppermint to her soup–commenting that it really did make it taste better, when really it was meant for tea after lunch. Oops(in all fairness none of us recognized it as peppermint, and didn’t follow what the herbs were mean for).
After lunch, we met back up with the group to climb up one of the two massive hills with shrines on top. Pachumama(Mother Earth) or Pachutata(Father Earth). I believe we climbed to the top of Pachutata. And by climbed, I really mean slowed walked up. We were still at elevation(around 4000 meters), where every breath takes in maybe 30 percent of Oxygen to a breath at normal sea level. I know I was struggling a bit to get to the top–which led some other folks from the tour to laugh a little at all of us. They had just done the Machu Pichu hike, and had some serious reservations on whether or not we would make it. In all honesty, after the hike, I was having some serious reservations as well.
That night, we were dressed up in traditional dress, and taken to the local town hall for a dance celebration. And by dance, what I really mean is run around in crazy circles dance. It was surprisingly good food(and a lot more energetic than I was expecting), but also crazy hot thanks to the thick layers and yards of cotton adorning my body. Shockingly, I was almost disappointed when it ended at the late hour of 10 PM, and we had to head back to our host families to sleep.
</It was a nice nights rest, and we set back off the following day with the group to hit up another island on the lake. It was another cool place to walk around, but I was slightly discouraged that it seemed the main attraction was overpaying for a lunch at the restaurant our tour guide kidnapped us to visit. I was grateful to have an excuse to cop out of it when all they were serving was fish and Claire(being severely allergic) wanted to step away. We wound up in the random local restaurant serving soup(complete with Chicken feet. It was delicious, and probably the most authentic experience we had the entire night.
Belated Gap Year 