Lake Titicaca, Peru – July 24th – 29th, 2017

For the 4th morning in a row, we awoke before 4am to once again board a bus.  On our way to Puno, after a brief break for coca tea, we stopped at a viewpoint overlooking the massive and gorgeous Laguna Lagunillas. After pulling ourselves away from the dumbfounding beauty, we continued on to Puno. We checked in at our AirBnB (which would be our recurring base while exploring the Peru side of Lake Titicaca) with the super helpful host, Rebelhino, and began roaming around Puno. Based on some negative feedback from fellow travelers, we had very low expectations for Puno, but it turned out to be quite a comfortable and nice place to explore markets and eat decent grub. Knowing we would be sending back some gifts and souvenirs with Matt, we went on a mission to find one of those ubiquitous zipper plastic box bags that we had seen everywhere in Asia and South America. After some diversions for delicious cornbread and other snacks, we finally found the bag for a decent price at a local market. We continued roaming, stopping to buy an advance bus ticket to the airport for Matt and trying to find worthwhile gifts. We had dinner at La Casa del Corregidor, which was our favorite restaurant in Puno with many beer and cocktail offerings and delicious food (plus a glorious propane heater to warm our continuously freezing bones!).

Our bus travel to Puno, including Laguna Lagunillas, the second bus driver's rest quarters, and a teacher's strike in Puno.

Some of the sights around Puno, Te Amo Peru!

Markets are always such an interesting way to explore another culture.

The next morning we packed our bags and caught a boat to Luquina Chico. Turns out, we had of course booked ourselves on the slowest boat on the lake – that’s what we get for trying to save a couple bucks! The boat stopped at one of the infamous Uros floating islands – tourist trap or not, we learned how the amazing floating patches of reeds are built, climbed a sketchy lookout tower, and met some very friendly locals. The sensation of walking on the floating reeds was really strange, it felt like walking on a thick trampoline. We finally lumbered our way over to Luquina Chico where we were deposited on the shore and met our homestay host. Regretfully, we can’t remember his name (Matt did though - it was Albano), but his son, Alexis, is imprinted into our minds as the cutest child on the planet. What an adorable and fully functional 2 year old! While his parents worked very hard in the fields, tending to the goats, and raising a newborn, Alexis contented himself by following in their shadow and playing with sticks. Then, at mealtime, he would carefully drink his tea from a nearly overflowing mug like a full-grown human! We spent the day playing with Alexis, peeling chuño (naturally freeze-dried/nearly rotten potatoes), and walking around the town with the host. After a beautiful overlook of the lake, the host ushered us back to the house to prepare for an anniversary party for the local school! Conveniently, he had local Aymara clothes for us to wear to the celebration. When we arrived at the school, there were several large groups of tourists dressed in the same garb and it was obvious this wasn’t a special one-off celebration as we were led to believe (more likely than misleading information, we misunderstood, seeing as all the communication was in Spanish), but rather a common touristy get-together. It wasn’t bad though, the locals performed a dance with local music and then all of the tourists did the same dance as best as they could, it was actually a lot of fun!

The Uros floating islands - so cool! Glad we survived the lookout tower...

One of the highlights of our Peru trip - our homestay in Luquina Chico

We were happy to see we weren't the only crappy dancers!

The next morning we sadly had to say goodbye to Matt. We gave him some big hugs and the arranged taxi picked him up at the homestay. We spent the rest of the morning helping the family grandmother shepherd the goats out to the fields, relaxing and reading in the sun, and playing with Alexis. While Dani took a nap, I helped the host beat the living crap out of piles of bean stalks with sticks to separate the beans from the pods. It was very satisfying in a lumberjack kind of way. After lunch, we packed up our things and walked down to the dock with our fingers crossed that our boat back to Puno would remember to pick us up (it’s possible we have PTSD after being left on the island in Thailand). After a nervous hour, finally the boat came and picked us up. Of course, the return boat was super slow, but the gentle roll, engine noise, high altitude, and beautiful weather made it easy to relax and drift off into naps.

Relaxing with the animals in Luquina Chico

That night, back at our AirBnB in Puno, we awaited our next visitors – Lisa and Brandon! However, it turned out their flight from Lima to Juliaca was overbooked and they were bumped to the first flight the next morning. This meant we would miss the boat to Amantani, an island where we had a reservation for the following night. So, that evening we scrambled, and with the help of our AirBnB host, we put together a plan to meet up with Lisa and Brandon on a spit of land closer to Amantani where, supposedly, there were other boats to the island. Crisis averted, or so we thought…

The next morning, we caught a colectivo from Puno to Capachica – where Lisa and Brandon would met us. There was a joyous reunion, and all was good – phase one accomplished! Then, we were told to take another colectivo to Llachon which was further down the spit of land and towards Amantani. So, we took this second colectivo, were deposited in Llachon, and proceeded to roam around this completely empty neighborhood searching for the boats to Amantani. After an hour or so of roaming, we made a couple calls, asked some locals, and discovered we were given the wrong information – the boats apparently left from Chifron (on the other side of Capachica)! Okay. After a scary confrontation with a very angry dog, we walked along the road hoping a colectivo or taxi would pass – it was a 16km walk to Chifron, so we had our fingers firmly crossed. Eventually, an angelic taxi passed and brought us to Chifron where, thankfully, the boat to Amantani came and picked us up. Surprisingly, this boat was even slower than the Puno-based boats (how is that possible?!), but we finally arrived to Amantani, phase two accomplished! We walked up the steep hill to our hotel, settled in, had some lunch, and relaxed while absorbing the completely jaw-dropping views of Lake Titicaca. We managed to peel our butts off of the chairs and walk around the island a bit, hoping to get more good views and maybe even play some soccer with locals. We found a few kids playing at a field in the town, but they weren’t very friendly and actually tried to charge us to play with them! Not what we had in mind… probably for the best though since the 12,000 ft. elevation may have gotten the better of us. Instead, we continued up the hill and nearly made it to the top of Pachatata where there was an ancient temple, but the coming darkness forced us to retreat to the hotel. After dinner, we tried to teach a card game to Lisa, Brandon, and two cousins from Lima – this turned out to be challenging going back and forth between English and Spanish, but we managed and had a blast!

Isla Amantani - relaxing and beautiful

The next day we caught our slow boat to Taquile Island. There was some interesting quality music playing in the town square while some school festival was building up, but we abandoned the crowds and roamed around through various neighborhoods and hills. Eventually we stopped for lunch and then raced down this enormous and steep hill to catch our boat back to Puno. Back in Puno, we settled in at our AirBnB once again and printed off a bunch of documentation that we apparently needed for the next day’s transit into Bolivia. Of course, we took Lisa and Brandon to dinner at our favorite restaurant, played cards, and returned to our AirBnB for more packing (again).

Isla Taquile - also relaxing and beautiful