Lago Titicaca

Hola todos. I am back in the real world after my second night in a home stay. Here's what happened yesterday: we started the day reasonably late (830am) and caught the local transport, a three wheel bicycle (known here as a tuk tuk) with two seats on the front, to the local dock. Our tuk tuk driver was really chatty, and happily pointed out local landmarks. Once at the dock, we caught our private boat, which took us out onto Lake Titicaca, the highest lake in the world, and the largest in South America. Lake Titicaca is absolutely massive, and 60% of the lake is in Peru and the rest is actually in Bolivia. Very cool and incredibly beautiful. After a short boat ride we arrived at the floating islands of Uros, build on reeds from the lake. This place is amazing, and the culture was untouched up until 35 years ago, when tourism took off. Because of this, and after a quick demonstration on how the islands are put together, we were lead into one of their house and pushed to buy a number of different embroidered fabrics. I did however succumb to buying some pillowcases, as I liked that they used the profits from these tourist visits to buy useful things such as solar panels (much safer than using candles around all of those reeds). I also found it interesting that due to the natural degradation of the lake reeds they have to renovate their houses every 3 months. Crazy!! After our quick visit, we traveled on our boat for another hour until we reached Llachon, on the Peninsula of the Lake, where we would be staying the night with a local family. We were au quickly introduced to our house papa, Juaquine, and led to his house where we were able to drop off our stuff. After a nice lunch of veggie soup and fish with rice (which I loved but Steve didn't) we played futbal with our house papas son, Royir, for ages (not really fair since he was used to the altitude, currently at 3800m). Then we helped our house mama, Camilla, harvest some corn and beans. After harvesting we were told that we could rest, but Royir wouldn't have it and proceeded to lead us on a walk to the lake. He was so lovely! At 4 we met our group and the rest of the house mamas and papas for a game or two of volleyball, a local pastime in the town. Man it was so much fun, but unfortunately my skills acquired from year 10 PE weren't really on par! After volleyball, we went back up to the house to change into the traditional clothes of the region, me in the married woman's version of skirt, jacket and hat, and Steve again in a poncho. I asked our house papa if he would be wearing a poncho also, and he replied (in Spanish) no its hot at the moment for me. I on the other hand was wearing a long sleeve top, cardi, big jacket and gloves! Crazy Peruvians! Before dinner, the group played a round of a card game (the Canadians are very big on their card games) then had dinner of veggie soup and a veggie curry with rice. It was really nice, but was so tired by that stage that I couldn't eat a lot. It was 8pm after all! After dinner we were lead back to our house (in the dark) and fell asleep in our comfy beds. Unfortunately, I was suffering an effect of the altitude, that is my feet would not stop tingling, which woke me up several times during the night! Not much fun! In the morning, we were greeted with some hot water to wash our faces and hands, then had breakfast with out new family of pan fried bread and pancakes with home made jam! It was to die for!! When we were getting ready to leave and meet our group, our house mama thanked us for coming to stay with her and her family. Unfortunately my Spanish vocabulary didn't include the phrase "the pleasure was ours" so a pointed "muchas gracias" had to suffice. We were then lead down to the dock and boarded our boat for our next adventure.