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Hola it's Laura
After leaving the group in La Paz and managing to get to Copacabana it was time for us to make it alone through Peru. We booked a bus to get us to our first destination of Puno. It was all fairly straight forward although it was a bit odd that we had to get on three mini buses just to get to our bus (one of which was only a 3 min journey!). Once we found ourselves at Puno bus station we were a bit unsure of what to do as we had no accomodation booked. Two Danish girls (Joan and Inaluk) who had got on the bus with us at Copcabana asked what we were doing and before we knew it a guy was offering us accomodation at a hostel so we thought we would all go and take a look. It was nothing spectacular but it was simple and close to the Plaza de Armos (main square) so we took it. The four of us went to grab something for lunch in Puno and then decided to book a tour for the following day to the islands on Lake Titicata. That afternoon Lily and i strolled around the main walking street, had a piercing by a lovely man in the top of our ears as a memory, and did a bit of shopping. We ran into the girls again so had some dinner together before an early night ready for a busy couple of days on the tour.
The following day we got up nice and early and had some breakfast at the hostel before leaving for the tour. We got on a mini bus to the port and then had a boat ride to the floating islands of Uros. This was really interesting to see how the communities live on these islands. We stayed in this area for a couple of hours and had a boat ride across to another floating island. They seem to rely quite heavily on tourism for money so i suppose its not as authentic as it looked. We then had a long (3 hour) boat trip to the island that we would be spending the night on, Amantali. When we got there we were assigned host families. The four of us were taken in by a lady called Aroura and her family. She cooked us some lunch of potato soup followed by boiled potatoes and salad! We then met the rest of the tour group at the main square where some of the boys played football with the locals. We then had a hike up to the highest point of the island. It only took about 45mins to get up there and Lily decided to ride up on a horse instead! We then watched a spectacular sunset from the top which made the sky beautiful colours. We came back down and Aroura made us dinner of potato soup and veg/potato stew with rice. Her parents were also there and as the four of us don 't speak much Spanish it was a struggle to make conversation. For the evenings entertainment we were all dressed up in local costume (i basically looked like a wench) and headed off to the community centre for music and dancing with the host families and locals. This was so tiring but so much fun. By the time we got to bed we were exhausted which was lucky as the beds weren't overly comfortable!
The following day we woke bright and early and had breakfast of pancakes, it was such a relief to not be given potato. We then headed back to the port and said goodbye to Aroura and her family and headed accross to the nearby island of Taquile. Once we got here we had a walk up to the main square where we had some time to look around before lunhc. Somehow us four girls were the only ones to have our lunch included on the tour even though we had paid the same amount which was a bonus! We then walked to the other side of the island and back to a port ready for our 3 hour journey back to Puno. Most of the group sat up on the top deck sun bathing and chatting which was really nice and relaxing. We got back to Puno and had soem time to relax before meeting some of the group (us four girls, two English guys, a Danish guy and a French guy) in the main square for dinner. We went to a really lovely restaurant and then headed off to a few bars for some drinks followed by karaoke (not that we knew any of the songs!) and dancing.
The following morning we caught a bus with Joan and Inaluk to the city of Arequipa. Unfortunatly a part of the bus fell off about an hour from the city so we decided to pay to jump on another bus rather then wait around any longer. Once we got to Arequipa we found some really good accomodation so we settled in and went off to explore. Lily and i fell in love with Arequipa from the moment we got there. It is such a great city with a spectacular Plaza de Armos which has a huge white catherdral and a beautiful fountain in the middle. We met the girls for dinner and ate overlooking the main square. The setting was great but the food not so nice! In the evening we had a stroll around and had coffee and desert in a nice little cafe.
The following morning we got up and made some breakfast then Lily and i set out for a morning of white water rafting! It was so much fun. It was just the two of us and two instructors and we went on grade 1-4 rapids including one big drop. We managed to stay inside the raft the whole time which is more than i can say for both of our instructors! There was an option for a cliff jump into the river and both of us chicken out of doing it which we are so disappointed by. We both froze as we had to make sure we jumped over some rocks which were sticking out. However, the whole experience was alot of fun! We got back to Arequipa and had some lucnh and spent the afternoon exploring the city. We then got washed and changed and met the girls for dinner. We then went out for a few drinks at some of the bars before heading out to a club. We felt a bit bad waking the hostel owner up at 5.30am to let us in!
The following day we woke up at 1pm and had missed check out time of 11am. We had to pay for an extra night so a bit later on decided that we would stay in Arequipa for one more day and go straight to Pisco rather than have one night at Huacachina which we had originally planned. We spent the afternoon relaxing. The hostel had a sun terrace so we sunbathed there for a while and went out for some dinner before having an early night.
The following day we checked out on time and left our bags in a storage room at the hostel. We spent the day walking around the city and booked ourselves on to a 13hour night bus to Pisco where we will spend the next couple of days before heading to Lima for our flight out of South America to Havana.
Lots of love Laura and Lily xx
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