We've got a little behind on these little blog updates but after almost 4 weeks here, here's our first post in Peru (no sightings of Paddington Bear just yet).
Our first taste of Peruvian life led us to the highest lake in the world, Lake Titikaka to visit the island of Amantani and stay with a local family.
Our journey started nice and early as we were picked up from our hostel in Puno and transported down to the lake. After buying some presents (rice, apples and a colouring book) for our host family, we were led on to our boat and serenaded by the soothing tones of the Beatles, as played on panpipes.
We were then introduced to our tour guide, who referred to himself only as 'Bruno from Puno'. As you can imagine he was quite the character.
A short boat trip led us to the floating islands. These are a set of islands made out of reeds, created to evade the attacks of the Incas and still house large communities even to this day.
We were shown how the islands are made from blocks of reed roots which are fastened together and covered in reeds before being anchored down. If these folk fall out with the neighbours, the good news is they can just upsticks and float a little further downstream.
The reeds really are a huge resource for these people, not only do they live on them, they eat them too (if you take the very base of one and unravel it it can also be a particularly effective hangover cure if then placed on your forehead!). After tasting some reeds- which i guess tastes like celery(?!), we were given a ride on a local water taxi to the nearest floating island to see how the locals get about, before heading off to Amantani.
Once there we met our host for the night, a single Mum called Sofia. She had a crazy four year old son who we first thought was called Pedro, but later discovered to be called Juan Sebastian. Yep, our Spanish still needs some work. After letting him pelt a football at me for an hour (this kid didnt understand a game of passing) we regrouped with everyone from our boat and hiked up to the island's highest point to watch the sunset. This gave us our first bit of training for Machu Piccu as the hike was pretty steep and tough going, but luckily only short in duration and the beauty of the sunset made it totally worth the effort.
Once we had descended we headed back for some dinner before going out for the evening's main event, a dance at the local village hall. Decked out in local attire, a poncho and hat for me and a very tight fitting dress and scarf for Georgie, we headed out. A short, but tricky to navigate in the dark, walk later we made it to the hall.. and we were the first ones there! We sat there quietly hoping others would show up as 3 Peruvians working the bar and the band sat and stared back at us in silence. This was awkward to the extreme.
It seemed like hours passed (in reality it was more like 10-15 minutes) before, luckily for us, other fellow tourists started making their way through the doors and the party started.
Although we were all completely unaccustomed to the music, our hosts soon showed is the appropriate dance moves (no robot or moonwalk necessary here) and Sofia was always the first off her seat which meant I was always the lucky first tourist having a go at each dance! We were also lucky enough to bump in to some of the friends we made on our Slat Flats trip so together with them, we merrily danced the night away!
The next morning was started with pancakes for breakfast (my favourite!) before saying our goodbyes to our host family. Pedro kept things formal, offering us a handshake each.
After a short boat ride we then hiked another island and got to know some of the other tourists a bit better, where we made plans to meet for dinner that evening.
Another boat ride led us back to Puno where we had the best steak, called lomo, we've ever had in our lives and after a few beers our wonderful trip was over.
No comments:
Post a Comment