Puno Quema

Hello everyone!

So as you may have noticed it’s been a really long time since I’ve written.

And I have a lot to fill you in on! So I’m going to separate it into different blog entries for organization's sake and so you don’t have to read it in one solid sit at the computer.

I have good news about my camera! It’s fixed. The day before I left for Bolivia (as much a procrastinator as ever), Evelyn’s younger sister Suci (I believe her full name is Suciel or something along those lines) was kind enough to take me to her friend who knows how to fix cameras. Evelyn was actually the one who called him up and she only referred to me as a friend so he wouldn’t know I was a gringa and give me a gringa price. Or maybe just because I am a friend. Anyway, Suci took me to this guy’s house. We went into a weird dark garage-like room and he looked at my camera. He didn’t know if he could, but he agreed to try to fix that day for the low low price of 60 soles (which is 20 bucks, so literally, a steal). Later I went back with Edson and he had fixed it! Hooray! I couldn’t believe it! It felt like a miracle. I mean, can you imagine getting a camera fixed for that cheap in the US? I sure can’t.

So I was ready to depart. I packed up all the traveling essentials (which ended up fitting in a small duffel bag and my backpack, and prepared to leave that night for Puno, Peru which is a town right on Lake Titicaca in the southern part of the country. I traveled to Puno with three other girls from my group: Amy, Emily, and Michelle. It was my first cross-country South American bus ride! Relatively uneventful. We got to Puno at about 5:30 in the morning on the day of Peru’s census. For the census everyone has to be shut up in their homes so almost nothing is open. We were able to eat breakfast at a little restaurant at the bus terminal. From there, we hauled our bags to the port to find out about visiting some of the islands on the lake. We found a guy who offered to let us stay on his island called something with an A (I’ll look it up for you), which is a four hour boat ride from Puno. So we went! Unfortunately, my sunscreen-slathering ways didn’t protect me from the terrible sun rays reflecting off the lake (which is huge, by the way… at times you can’t see the other side and it feels like the ocean) while I was sleeping with my arms flung over the side of the boat and my shirt riding up on either side. I ended up getting the worst sunburn of my life, one on each side right above my hips. Just perfect for pants-wearing. Later it blistered and peeled and screamed, but you probably don’t want to know about all that.

First we stopped at the Uros which are a small group of man-made floating islands. They’re really cool and made out of some kind of masses of organic matter and carpeted with reeds. They use the reeds to build their houses, build their boats, build their islands, make cool crafty reed things for the tourists, and sometimes they even eat them! I tried the reeds, and they tasted a lot like celery, only they were spongier. One of the men on the island we visited gave us a spiel about how they live and then we ooed and aawed at the reediness of everything and then we left. We made it to the A island where we stayed with a woman who seemed perturbed that we would only be paying for one meal as we had brought food for the rest. For that reason, she generally laughed menacingly at everything we said and made herself an enemy. The island wasn’t all that exciting, while obviously extremely beautiful. It seems almost the entirely livelihood of the place is tourism. We walked all around and watched the sunset. We talked to the sheep that the woman we stayed with (Serafina) owns. They were nice. Then we slept (me on my stomach since there was no sleeping on my sides this time) and got up early to take the boat back to Puno. This time I stayed inside.