Lydia's Year in Peru: Lake Titicaca

The rest of the trip to the Southeast of Peru was really lovely, but second by second posts are boring! I did take my first train ride ever from Aguas Calientes to Ollantaytambo. It was fun, but I thought I would get motion sickness. We didn't really do anything between arriving back in Cusco and driving the grueling 10 hours to Puno and Lake Titicaca.

Soooo pretty!!

Lake Titicaca was AWESOME!! I thought at first, 'what's so great about a big, high lake?' Then I realized that it's the people that are so awesome! They made their own land to live on in the Uros islands. The literally built the whole island. It's really quite neat! We visited the island of SuchiMaya in Uros and they gave us a demonstration about how they make the island. We got tours inside their houses. There was a really cute little baby there too named Milagros or Miracles!

The little demo.

Milagros with our guide Estephany

We left the Uros to head over to the island of Amantani. It was about a 3 hour boat ride. The lake is huge!! When we arrived we were sorted into groups to sleep in different houses. I was with Julia and Addie!! We went to the house for lunch (quinua soup) which was delicious! Then we had some free time, so we went down to the beach to swim. I wimped out, but still have a picture! It was really cold!!

It was COLD!

They had a ceremony for us on Amantani that night with some boys from the town playing native music. They also put us all in native costumes and we danced all together. It was really fun and nice. We spent the night there and we got up really early the next morning to eat breakfast and head down to the boat!

The woman I stayed with!

Next stop, Taquille. Taquille was really cool, but not to all the hype it got I think. It is a self governed island, so they have whatever rules they want. This includes that you can't give candy to the little kids. We just ate lunch there, but I did get a good picture of the rules on the way in. We headed back to Puno after on a 4 hour boat ride. It was a gorgeous day full of sunburn!