First of all we shall start in Cusco! Here we spent the day relaxing in Cusco, as we were still recovering from the Inka trail...my calves have never felt so sore in my life! I never want to climb stairs again..which could be a problem later in life. Anyways, we did a bit of shopping, made a couple of new Peruvian friends, although the language barrier made it very awkward for conversation, and they somehow roped us into meeting them at 8 at the fountain in Cusco square....its safe to say we er..forgot to, but they were nice guys nonetheless. Then Ruby went home for some much needed rest, whilst I indulged my inner nerd and visited the Pre Columbian Art Museum. It was really great, very well set out with wooden and clay pieces from the primitive tribes of south america right up to the silver and gold of the Inkan empire. I could have stayed there for hours, but dinner and drinks were calling, so I had to leave.... after about two hours :P
That night I had decided was the night I was going to celebrate my birthday, and boy, did we celebrate! Ollie took us to this awesome restaurant called Los Perros or "The Dogs", dont let the name for you, it was really cool, very colourful and had lots of tourist friendly food (dont get me wrong, we are still loving peruvian food, but every now and then you just need a hamburger!) It was a great meal and great atmosphere, yet soon we were moving on to Paddy´s, cuscos one and only Irish pub :P yep, we were on the tourist trend. Paddy´s is just your standard Irish pub, a little classier than the Irish for all you people playing in the Eastern Suburbs, so it was very comfy, and Ruby and I shared some yummy cider. Corry kept getting harrased by these little children trying to sell him gum (this was at around 10pm mind you...children dont sleep here, seriously, its a little worrying), and finally wore him down. Unfortunatly, this kid was very cunning, and had left two pieces of gum in there, and filled the rest of the box with rocks! We all had a good laugh at Corry, but he thought it was pretty hilarious too so it was all ok. From there we decided to move on to somewhere with some tunes, yet as we were walking across the sqaure, the kids came back!! Nz Tim had bought a tshirt from the bar that said "No gracias", which really you need here in Peru because you cant walk down the street without being asked to buy something. Anyway, we got a group of these little kids selling gum chasing us across the square, which was crazy, BUT it got worse. Soon we found ourselves surrounded by club promoters, trying to get us into their respective venues, shout at us inconcievable amounts of free drinks! it was crazy, they were like seagulls picking at gringo chips!! Finally, we decided to just pick the nearest place in order to get away from them, which luckily turned out to be pretty awesome!!
The music was great, except they played a club version of BEIBER!!!! WE CANNOT ESCAPE!!!!!!! mind explodes there was lots of dancing, ass shaking (even right in peoples faces...TIM!), pretending to be boyfirends and girlfriends to avoid over enthusiastic peruvians, and drinks, but dont worry, we all looked after each other and made it back by the reasonable time of 3 :P
Next day was a right off, we took a 6 hour bus to Puno, where we were writing to you from now, and slept most of the way, and after Ruby and I got our fried chicken, we were straight to bed.
The next day however was much more exciting, as we began our adventures on Late Titikaka...ok guys stop your sniggering, it actually means The Great Puma, and has nothing to do with tits or cars. Geez.
Hehe our first stop was the floating Islands of Uros. They were unbelievable! They whole islands are made of reeds, even the houses, the boats, everything, they even eat them! Because of the elements, they have to rebuild their boats and houses every three months, and once their islands touch the bottom of the lake, they have to abandon them and start all over again! Talk about a tough life. But they were such wonderful people, so colourful and friendly, they showed us their houses and dressed us up in their traditional clothes and took us for rides on their boats, it was so much fun! The funniest thing was when we were leaving, they sang for us, firstly in quechuan, then an adorable redintion of My Bonnie, followed by "Row row row your boat", which finished with them shoulting "Asta Lavista Baby!" at us. It was too funny, they sure know how to pander to the tourists.
Fom there we made our way to the island where we would be spending the night with a traditional Quechuan family. Ruby and I were a little worried at first, because our spanish is poor and our Quechuan even worse, but we ended up staying with a lovely family who spoke spanish and even a little english, which was a relief. Our papa took us to the house, introduced us to his wife, who was such a sweet lady, and they had lunch all ready for us and everything. We tried having conversations with him, and we got along quite well depiste our language barrier, he didnt mind that we didnt understand him at times and just giggled at us. Our mama took us out to work in the fields for a little while, and Ruby and I became very handy with a ho (minds out of the gutter now please! hehe), but we spend most of the time playing firsbee and soccer with their littler grandson. He was so cute, he wasnt sure of us at first, and kept shooting us with his treebranch gun, but afterwhile, when we joined in on his game, he decided that we were ok, and even proceeded to share his chocolate buiscuits with us! It was so cute!!! We taught him how to high five, and how to say the word Yes, which he liked alot haha! Then it was time for dinner, but before we could go down, our mama dressed us up in the traditional clothing of single ladies (oops! sorry love) of Peru before sending us down for dinner. It was very nice, and yes! much to everyones surprise I ate a multitude of delicious vegetables! My stomach was probably freaking out or rejoiceing, Im not really sure.
After dinner, we were taking back by our families to sleep in our little house, our beds were really comfortable and warm, and Ruby and I slept like a log!
Unfortnatly, the next day Ruby woke up not feeling so good, damn altitude!! We had a lovely breakfast of empanada thingies made by our lovely mama, before it was time to say farewell. I had such a wonderful time at their house, and so did Ruby, it was so beautiful where they lived on the banks of the giant lake, and it was really interesting seeing things from the local side, rather than always being on the tourist side. Neither of us will forget it.
Today we made our way across the lake to another Island for lunch, which we had to walk uphill (no more stairs arggh!) to get to, but the views from the lake were spectacular! Our guide told us all about the people who live there, how they all work as one community, and nobody owns the land, because they believe that the earth is not a resource but a sacred being. He also told us that most people on the island get married at 18, and if you want to get married, you and your fiancee have to live together for one year...and youre not allowed to have sex during that time...hmmm...
After lunch we took the boat back to Puno, which is where we are now. Tomorrow we are leaving Peru (sadface) and we are crossing the border to Bolivia! We are sad to leave Peru, it is a really lovely country, and having to say goodbye to some of our new friends, but we are looking forward to starting the next leg of our journey.
Lots of love to you all, I hope youre all having a lovey summer and lead up to Christmas so far
Love Sally xoxoxo
Brogan and Vicki in their lovely outfits
Lake Titikaka :)
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