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After rubbing our 8 aching legs it was time to push on to Lake Titicaca. Unfortunately this meant for me and Polly an 8 hours journey back down the road that we'd travelled on a week ago. We only mentioned this fact to Rach and Joel about 5 or 6 times. Thankfully I think someone had alerted the bus company to this fact so they put on some special entertainment for us namely a very old woman who sang in the most high pitch out of tune voice we have ever heard (so we tipped her 50 cents). To add to the show was a very enthusiastic meat cutter who boarded the bus with a goat carcass and proceeded to chop it up and sell it to our fellow travellers. Maybe the National Express should consider this?
Lake Titicaca is pretty big and pretty high (at 4000 meters it claims to be the highest 'navigatable lake in the world', whatever that means). To visit this lake we had booked ourselves on a tour that involved visiting the famous floating islands then spending a night with a family on another island. Unfortunately our guide for this trip was Ruban who was no Marco (see last blog). Ruban spoke English or at least he had learnt a script in English, so he could talk about the lake and its islands but he didn't really know what he was saying! Were you to ask Ruban a question he would look at you blankly before mentally scrolling through his script and randomly selecting a passage that might be related to your question. Brilliant. Also if he ever forgot what he was saying rather than trying to explain a word or asking for help he would simply revert back to Spanish.
The islands though were brilliant. The floating islands are made 100% from reeds that grow on the lake. So the houses, shops and floor are all made from reeds and it's really very impressive. Although I was a little disappointed to find out that they are anchored to the base of the lake. I thought we'd have to sail round looking for the 'floating islands'. After the floating island we went on to Amantani Island, our home for the next 24 hours where we were greeted by Isabel and Alesha our temporary family. Their house was quite the eye opener and quite painful because all the door ways were half our size so we were constantly banging heads. The toilet was a short walk from the house, just next to the sheep pen! and the kitchen was made of mud. It really was quite different.
After dinner (rice type stuff and potatoes with tea or rather hot water with flavoured twigs) we were told to get ready for dancing. We wandered upstairs to get our jackets only to be pounced on by our hosts who attacked Rach and Polly with very colourful traditional dress. They were given no choice and Pete and Joel found it very funny...until they too were pounced on this time with ponchos and little woolly hats. To be brutally honest we all looked ridiculous...but then so did everyone else! We headed off to the local town hall for the evening's entertainment which was 'traditional dancing'. Normally these 2 words together would send shivers down my spine but it was brilliant. All the women were dressed in the same outfits and the band seemed to consist of 5 youths who hadn't quite grasped the idea of playing in time. As the music started were dragged up to dance. Well I say dance what I mean was spin round in a circle whilst shaking our arms up and down. It was very bizarre but great fun.
So our trip to the islands was great but throughout our stay something was bothering me, where were all the men? It was very strange there were no men anywhere at all. I asked our guide but was just told that everyone on the island spoke the Quequen language (the local dialect). I ask our hosts who just giggled. It was very odd an island of women ... and some strange tourists in fancy dress who kept asking where they could find men.
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