A recap of the last week! Part 1

So in the last week or so we headed from Cusco to Puno, which is a smallish place on the Peruvian shore of Lake Titicaca. I personally was expecting more of the place, for me it lacked any real "let's stay another night" factor, within 20 minutes of arriving at the hostel we'd booked a day trip to two islands on Lake Titicaca (TT), and booked our bus tickets to Copacabana, Bolivia.

The next morning we were up at 6am to eat our pancake breakfast, and be ready for our 6:45 pick-up, after a typically poor shower and a quick feed we were on our way. A short while later we arrived at the dock and clambered aboard our boat, which for now we'll call the world's slowest boat... Apparently at 3,800m combustion engines don't tend to work too well, therefore everything runs at a snails pace.

Our first stop was the Unos islands of TT, which are unique in that they are made of reeds. The theory behind it is that they harvest the reeds from the edges of the lake, and form a base by lashing together the roots of the reeds (they are wooden like), and upon which they lay over the reed itself, which then dries out in the sun creating something similae to hay. Over time they expand these structures which then the locals (people live on them) build their reed houses and furniture. It's a very interesting concept, which originally came about when  the Spanish (them again) were invading the native indigenous population, many fled to the lake to hide from the Spanish (it's huge), and their legacy was born. Today they rely on tourism to survive, where previously they were proficient fishermen. Sadly after the intriduction of some Trout into TT, they majority of the smaller fish died a parasite infested death, leaving the fish population dwindling. Now they eat a lot of birds (ducks, moor hens) in addition to any fish they can catch. As an experience it was pretty interesting, but the hard sell of the souvenirs (which the women make themselves) was too obvious, and pressured.

Next up was a 2.5hr boat ride for lunch at Taquile island, which is a normal and much larger island. About this time I left the cramped cabin and headed outside, where I fell asleep in the sun for a while... wonderful. We arrived at Taquile, trekked up its steep geography for 20 minutes to the main town/plaza and had some typical food (fried trout, rice, chips), took a few photos (us with 3 guys chewing Coca) and then a (not so) fantastic 3hr boring boat ride home, on many occasions where I nearly jumped overboard in favour of taking the alternative transport back to Puno, which I estimated would shave an hour off, front-crawl!

Instead I opted for a sleep outside again, which was cheifly responsible for the widespread burning of precisely half of my face and neck... hey, it's the first time I've managed to lose my respect for the sun, especially at altitude! I attribute much of the blame on Miranda for not being caring and waking me up, she has little knowledge of this.

In a rather large nutshell, in which I've tried (probably in vain) to make it sound excting, really it wasn't that great... thankfully it was cheap! Another experience, none the less, but speaking for both of us, TT is just another lake... once which lacks the beauty and landscape of the good ol' Lake District in England.

The following day we took a bus to Copacabana in Bolivia, where we were planning to get a bus to La Paz. What we hadn't considered was that this place didn't even have an ATM. We had about £1 worth of Peruvian Neuvo Soles, which we couldn't even change at the street cambios (scoundrels). Cue some new old friends, Ricky and Claire who we met whilst watching them tuck into Guinea Pig and Llama respectively whilst in a bar in Cusco. Luckily we managed to buy 4 tickets to La Paz, with literally every joint penny we had... Thank our lucky stars!

We arrived in La Paz and located our Hostel/Hotel for our 3 days in La Paz, Cruz de los Andes which was actually a really nice place, aside from the 4 large flights of stairs, which at around 4,000m certainly challenges the old cardio! La Paz itself seemed to be everything we hadn't heard about it, it felt safe, the local population weren't all off their face's on cocaine, and it seemed like a pretty busy, industrious place. Coming to La Paz, we had one true goal... to embark on the Death Road, which we'd read and heard so much about, after literally a day of researching the myriad of companies offering a thrilling ride, we settled on Madness Downhill, who had fantastic bikes, Rocky Mountain RMX downhill bikes.

Much more to follow in part 2, but I'll give my soon to be sunburnt fingers a rest... it's 11am in San Pedro, it's 30 degrees, and it's breakfast time!

Hope you're all OK, it's nice to be in touch with the world again after Bolivia!

Puno

We've just arrived in Puno, where we plan to visit Lake Titicaca. Tomorrow we'vre thinking of doing a day trip to a couple of the floating islands, then we'll likely visit Copacabana (Boloivian, supposedly the better side) for a day or more, before heading to La Paz.

Unfortunately we had to ditch plans to visit Arequipa in favour of covering more miles in order to get to Salta in time for Xmas, obviously covering everything we want to do in Bolivia first (mountainbiking, mines, salt flats).

Anyway, off for some grub... ciao

P.S Well played Leicester!