WEDNESDAY 19th Llachon to floating islands to Puno
Up at 6:30. A beautiful cloudless day and minus 5 temperature.
Magdalene provided us with a lovely breakfast. A pancake each, a boiled egg and homemade fried bread.
We went up the back with Herman to see their livestock pen as he had to feed a lamb. They have 15 sheep, two burros, a chicken and a calf. I don't know where the cow is. Real subsistence farming.
Then we got to meet their son Edison (15). He is already taller than his father.
At 7:45 we walked down to the jetty to catch our boat back to Puno.
Fond farewells. Everyone in our group seemed to have had a great time. Having been quite anxious yesterday about this homestay I came away feeling really pleased that we got to experience it. It could well be one of the highlights of our trip.
The added bonus is that my Spanish vocabulary has probably doubled overnight. It's now reached double figures :)
Back on our slow boat and two hours later we arrived at the floating islands.
There's a whole city living on islands made of reeds. Hard for us to get our head around this existence. The island we landed at was about the size of our house. Five families live here. They have a small hole in the reeds that they throw a fishing line down. The water level is only about a foot below the reed platform. The houses are built another metre above the platform. They do have solar power. They drink the lake water which is still quite salty at about 25% the salinity of sea water.
Tourism is their main source of income. Every island had a boat full of punters visiting just like us. They have a reed boat that they take tourists on for a wee ride for ten Sol per person. Lindsey and I had seen enough after about ten minutes.
Eventually we were all back on board our launch and thirty minutes later we were back in Puno.
Checked back into our hotel and had some rest and iPad time. Lindsey is not feeling great with the effects of the altitude. This is our second day at 3900 to 4100 metres.
Tomorrow we drop by about 250m to La Paz so hopefully she will feel better.
After our rest we made a 2km return walk for a fruitless geocaching search.
Tonight is our last night in Peru so the group went out to dinner together.
A really nice restaurant, good service and great food. Lindsey had a Peruvian specialty, deep fried guinea pig. I had charcoal chicken.
 |
| The reason that we went to this restaurant was because a stage show was included at no extra cost. It was amazing. They were all students. The "band" consisted of a group of five young men. Two guitarists a drummer and the other two plated a variety of Andean flutes, like panned flutes, and small woodwind instruments like recorders but there was no mouthpiece. The "flute" sat just below their lower lip and they blew over it. Then there were maybe ten dancers although no more than six were on stage at any time. They wore different costumes for each regional dance they performed. All costumes were in bright Peruvian colours. Some with masks, some with huge hats. I particularly liked a dance where two men became Condors and challenged each other around the dance floor. |
Our tour guide leaves us at the Bolivian border tomorrow so tonight was a farewell to him as well.
Back to the hotel around ten. Alarm set for 5:30.
No comments:
Post a Comment