It has been way too long since I've been able to upload anything. Apparently when it rains, we don't get internet out here. I will try to catch you up now though, and otherwise it'll have to wait until I'm in Santiago.

So let's start on the Friday after the chocolate museum social (which was two weeks ago, I know). On Friday we had to take the night bus into Puno from Cusco. It would leave at 22:15 and we could pick up our tickets until 21:30. I thought our travel agency would have a desk at the terminal where we could pick up the tickets, but they had booked tickets for us with a bus company. This had escaped my attention. We had no idea where to pick up our tickets. The place had an internet cafe though, and I had copy of the tickets in my email. So we logged in, got the tickets, and printed them over there. We were on the bus by 21:45. No biggie. The chairs on the bus were really big and comfortable. They went back almost completely flat. Puck fit into the chairs curled up on her side and she slept like a baby. I am unfortunately a little bit taller, so that didn't really work for me. I still did sleep a fair amount. We stopped around 04:30 in a town close to Puno and I couldn't get back to sleep after that. I saw the sun come up out of the bus window. The sky first turned a light blue grey, then yellow and red and orange, and then the sun peeked over the mountains. We drove into Puno about an hour later. We still had about an hour and a half before we would be picked up for our tour over the lake.

We had breakfast at the terminal with a random English backpacker. He was walking around at the cafe we were sitting at, looking a bit disheveled and lost, so we invited him to join us. Turned out he'd been on three consecutive night busses and thus hadn't slept very much recently. We all had pancakes together.

After some searches and phone calls we found the woman from the travel agency who had come to pick us up. She took us to the docks where our boat was waiting to take us on a tour around lake Titicaca. We had booked the tour that takes you through the not so touristy places. It was an amazing tour. Our guide was really nice and knew so much about the lake and the islands and the peoples of the islands. We started out on an island called Taquile (which I can only remember as Tequila island, I had to google it's proper name). Here our tour guide explained that the people still wear very traditional clothing. The colours all have meanings. If a man wears a red and white hat this means that he is single, while a completely red hat means that he is married. The married men also have belts and pouches made by their wives. The single girls wear colourful skirts and if they are of marriageable age they wear big pompoms on their enormous black scarves. Girls looking for husbands also put stones into the pompoms to make them heavier. The leaders of the villages (of which there are 26), wear black and red. They are always a married couple over 30, and new ones are chosen every year. This is done by the oldest form of democracy: a show of hands. Husbands and wives vote separately, to minimize a bias and to encourage everyone to think for themselves.

The boys on the island learn to knit when they are 5 years old. By the time they are 7 they knit with five needles around. The girls spin wool, but are not allowed to knit. When a boy is looking for a wife he knits a beautiful 'single-boy' hat in white and red. Both boys and girls of marriageable age carry a small mirror with them. If a boy sees a girl he likes he takes out his mirror and reflects sunlight into the girls eyes. If she likes him too she will do the same. If there is no sun they throw stones at each other. When the boy comes over to talk to the girl she will steal his hat and take it home to check the quality. Bad quality hat is bad quality boy. If the hat is watertight and doesn't let through light, it quality is good and boy is approved. Some boys try to cheat by rubbing the inside of the hat with animal fat. So the girls have started checking for that too. If the boy is approved the couple live together for a year in a house provided by both families. If in this year they like each other and they don't want to split up, they get married. They marry really young on the island. 16 is normal for a girl to get married at.
If the boy is flashing his little mirror but the girl does not like him back she will pull her scarf over her face and turn away. The boy will then come over to try and convince her to talk to him. When she has had enough he runs the risk of being hit with pompoms with stones in them!

Life on the island is really simple. Most people are farmers, with a little side job in tourism. There are only a few rules on the island. The first rule is 'don't be lazy'. When we went to meet a small community of people on the island, they never sat still. Even while we were talking to them the women were weaving, the men were knitting, the girls were spinning. The work never ends. The people always find something to do. They don't have lawyers on the island. Only one judge who is authorised to give out lashes to anyone who does not stick to the rules. A minimum of 5 lashes and a maximum of 24 lashes is maintained. Luckily there is little to no crime on the island.

Also, they use rubber slippers as hinges on their garden gates.

We were invited to meet some of the people from a local community. They showed us how they live and what they make. They played traditional music for us and they had set up a little market where we could buy some of the things the boys and men had knitted. It was such an experience to see people who live so completely differently from anything I'm used to. They seem very isolated. Mobile phones were only now starting to become a reality on the island. There is however quite a lot of tourism going on. You could clearly see the benefits from that. Our tour guide told us that because of the tourism they now had running water and a brand new paved pathway from the docks to the village. They really seemed to enjoy showing us around, while talking cheerily in Quechua that none of us could follow, but which sounded very sweet and welcoming. They live completely of the island. Even their soaps and shampoos are made from plants that grow on the island.

After meeting the people of the island we walked to the other side where we found a beautiful bay that looked to come straight out of a Pirates of the Caribbean movie lay waiting for us in the sun. It was absolutely gorgeous. We could see all the way to Bolivia. We spent some time with our feet in the (freaking cold) water. Puck, Alex, and Caito even went swimming a little. Then it was back on the boat and off to lunch.

We had lunch in a very new restaurant, it didn't even have windows yet. Building materials lay piled up in a corner. The food was spectacular though. It was a dish called 'pachamanca' which translates from quechua as 'food from the earth'. It is made in an over that is basically a hole in the ground. They cover it with super hot bricks, add whatever they want to cook, from meat and fish to vegetables and potatoes and bananas, and then cover the whole thing in banana leaves. Then they bury it and leave it for about an hour. When we got there it was just about done. The cook gave a small offering of wine and coco leaves to pachamama (mother earth), and waynapapa (father sun). They were asked to bless the food and thanked for providing it. Then the dish was dug up. When they removed the cover of banana leaves a delicious smelling steam rose all at once from the still-hot bricks. We had a wonderful lunch. First we were served quinoa soup, and then a plate of everything that had been in the hole. Very tasty.

Lastly we went to see one of the floating islands, or Uros. Long ago there was an Inca army that came invading out of the mountains. The people of lake Titicaca knew the could not fight them, so instead they hid in the reeds and shallow waters that make up so much of the lake. The Inca's didn't perceive them as a threat, so they let them be. Over time these people figured out how to build small floating islands out of the reeds that surrounded them. Now there are around 100 of those islands in the lake. Only 15 are permanently inhabited. We went to one of those 15 islands. There were five families living there, but they were mostly women and children. Teenagers mostly leave the islands for the city when they are old enough. The people on the floating islands live form fishing. They trade their fish on the mainland for potatoes and vegetables. Next to maintaining the island and fishing the people make small blankets and reed boats to sell to tourists. One of the most important materials in everything they do is the reeds. Their houses are made out of reeds, their boats are made out of reeds, and whenever they get hungry, the pluck a strand of reed out of the lake, peel it, and eat it.

They showed us how to make the islands. They lash together the floating roots of the reeds, and as the top dries they scatter more and more reeds over it. It takes about half a year to a year to make an island, depending on the weather, and it requires constant maintenance. After about three years the island needs to be moved to a different part of the lake, otherwise it will sink because the foundation layer will have become too soaked through.

The people sang a welcoming song for us in Quechua and then in Spanish. It was all about how everyone's heart is the same and that we're all family and that's how we were welcomed. It was very sweet. There was one little girl there who was so small that the reeds were just a little too high for her to walk on, so she had to sort of half waddle half jump to get across the island. It was the cutest thing I've ever seen.

At the end of the visit we were offered the opportunity to experience a ride on the reed boat of the families. We were taken a little way into the enormous reed field. They propel the reed boats with long poles. The boats can't go very far into the lake because the poles won't reach the bottom anymore, but a big part of the lake is quite shallow and filled with reeds. This is where these boats can go.

That was the last stop on our tour and we headed back to shore. We were all absolutely exhausted so we found our hostel. We rested and ate and I was in bed by 21:30.

Sunday we had a whole day on a bus with a few stops along the way. The first stop was at a little village that seemed obsessed by bulls. There were little statues everywhere. There was an adorable little church that we wanted to go see, but unfortunately it was closed. Instead, we wondered around the town square and bought coffee.

The next stop was at one of the highest points along the road to Cusco. It's at around 4500 metres above sea level, just above the border where it's still possible to farm. There was another little market, and a girl with a grumpy llama offering pictures. We didn't stay there very long, just long enough to take some pictures of the beautiful mountains around.

We had lunch at a touristy place really close to a waterfall. The view was gorgeous, and the alpacas and llamas chilling there were hilarious. There was one that looked like it was stoned out of its mind all the time.

Then we moved on to some more ruins. There were 156 storage silos in that spot. The village close by only housed about 150 people though. The silos held anything from clothes to potatoes to corn. It's the biggest collection of such storage spaces in the country. Five of them have been restored to how they used to be. The Inca army was fed from the food stored at this site. It also had a big temple that was often frequented by pilgrims. The people of the village would see it as their duty to feed the pilgrims as well. That's why there were so many silos even though the village was so very small. After we spent about an hour doing a guided tour of the place we went back on the bus to go to the 'Sistine chapel of South America'.

There was so much gold and big artworks on the walls. The ceiling was painted in gorgeous purple and more gold, in flowery patterns. The whole church was dedicated to Jesus. It really is a beautiful church.

After that we went to Cusco in one stretch. Then it was back to Urubamba in the collectivo. It was a long and exhausting weekend, but it was absolutely worth it.