Puno, Peru

Hey, It's that time again, the latest report is Puno, Peru where I've just returned from staying with a local family on a remote island in lake Titikaka and taking part in their village life, like soccer at 4000m altitude, which makes you puff sooo damn bad, but gets the fitness back quicker than a week at the gym. On the way over to the island, I dropped by the floating villages of Urun, which are all entirely made or reeds. The base of the island, the houses the boats, everyting almost is reeds, they even eat the white base of the reed, which tastes a bit like celery. 99% of the babies there are born on the islands with the local mid-wife and they live to around 65. They even have a whole in the island which is a little swimming pool to teach the kids how to swim, and they eevn made a pool fence out of.... yes, reeds. But no reed island is complete without solar powered cable tv which everyone is South America seems to have. On this island 14 families lived there, and this island has grown and shrunk over the years, but if any of the family has a problem that can't be solved via fight to the death (joking about that part), the just literally cut that part of the island off and rent a couple of motor boats and tow it off to another part of the lake, anchor it, and live their, or join another larger community island. Infact the island I visited was originally 10km away, and it was towed to it's current spot via rented motor boats which is a funny concept. The arts the do their are amazing and made for some great gifts to take home, but seeing the place was an awesome experience. When with the local family, I stayed in a mud brick home with a corregated iron roof and indoor wood stove, the whole deal when it comes to rural South America. At night we were dressed in local attire, for men it was a poncho, and the women wore the clorful dress, white decorative blouse, and black decorative hood, and all of them dance this weird Peruvian dance which is vaguely reminiscent of Merengue and Monica and Rachel, it reminded me of a night out at Bulimba, but we had a Peruvian folk band instead of the whole DJ setup :-) They have words printed on the stadium in Quechua which is not Spanish and a diffferent language, that mean 'Don't be lazy', 'Don't lie', and 'Don't steal' to keep their community honest, as they had police on the island 20 years ago, but they caused problems, so now if anything happens like a drunken brawl and I'm not sure if this includes visitors, but they whip them in the soccer stadium by giving them 3 lashings with the god awful huge whip that would have to tear skin off bones, and if you do it again you get a another 2 sets of 3 lashings twice as hard! So with that being said, no one was whipped last night! The most surreal thing about the island was being woken to a farmer or shepard playing a flute throughout the hills, rather than the roosters I've become quite acustomed to. After leaving my brief hosts for a very cultured experience, and their unreal vegeterian food with alpaca beanie gift in hand, we caught the boat to a neighbouring island for a quick 45min trek up the mountain where little gypsie girls charged for photos as they posed for you. The landscape, with farmlands and blue sea views (but really lake Titikaka) made this place seem like the Mediterrainean, although I've never been, I could only imagine this is what it would be like. We'd cross through stone manmade arches that seemed to have no support but stayed up from their weight combined with gravity, and the pressure of each stone leaning against the next. Up top I entered the local square through another arch with catholic cross adorned atop, but they're not really catholic and no catholic preists reside in the churches in this more touristy island, so strange I thought. Little peruvian girls come up and try to persuade you to by wrist bands for 1 sole which they whisper so quietly to you, and I repeatly so 'No gracias' around 5 or 6 times before they get the hint, and I'm left wondering if I should've given her the 1 sole just for her persistence, but like anywhere I avoid giving money to kids. The kids and adults however do have a knack for hitting your pity bone, and if they don't chant 'Amiiiiiiiigo' in a whining voice like someone begging you to put them out of their misery, they'll then try to put on the waterworks and give you an oscar worthy crying act that worked on a travelmate in La Paz. After a look around, I went for a wonder and had some local kingfish to cure my never ending hunger from all the exercise, which is never a bad thing. On the way down there passing through more 'Catholic' arches and over 542 stone steps to the dock, I grabbed the boat back into Puno which gave me 3 hours to grab some sun upstairs on this rickedy little deisel boat. So tonight is drinks and dinner in a place somewhere around Puno here, which means I have to rush off as usual. Only 4 days left till the Inca trail and 3 days later I'll finally have made it to Machupiccu, can't wait! Hope all is well back in sunny Brisbane. No USB port here, so no photos this time sorry. Take it easy Adam