Round The World Honeymoon: Day 24

Thursday 25^th November 2010

I woke up 20 minutes before the alarm this morning, (06:40) this is getting way out of hand.

Baleria knocked on the door at 07:00 ish and I was already up, dressed and packed.

We went down to the “kitchen” for breakfast which consisted of pancakes with “Fanny Jam” (I get the feeling that Fanny are like the Heinz of Peru) and a cup of herb tea that tastes a bit like mint and lemon. I had a visit to the bathroom. Bathroom is definitely too kind a word for the tin out house I found myself in. Once finished there was a bucket of water outside to rinse away the waste, a sort of self flush. Nice!

We had a wash overlooking the lake, the views to be fair were amazing.

I grabbed my bag and crawled out of the doorway (how small are the doorways around here??)

We met the rest of the group down at the harbour for 08:00 and boarded the boat.

Today we were heading to Taquile Island. We could see the other island from the harbour and were informed that it would take an hour and a half to get there. AN HOUR AND A HALF!! I could swim it faster than that. These boats were so slow I think they were powered by guinea pigs!

We took the opportunity to relax at the back of the boat, I had finished Keith Richards in the tin outhouse that morning so I was left with the ipod.

(as an aside this lake is huge, its about 165miles long and 50 miles wide, it was difficult to believe that we weren’t at sea)

We arrived at Taquile Island and were informed that we would visit the town plaza. It was a massive walk up to the plaza which was reminiscent of day two of the Inca Trail. We arrived in the plaza to find that nothing was going on…. Nothing! An hour and a fricking half on a boat and an Everest like climb to see bugger all. Cheers for that!

We sat on a bench and the local guide told us about some of the customs of the island. Such as, the men knit and the women weave, they were voted the best weavers in all of South America a few years back by UNESCO making the majority of their products ridiculously expensive.

The guide told us about the customs of marriage. The wedding day is like a punishment. The bride and groom have to sit on the floor whilst everybody else eats meat (remember meat is for special occasions) and drink cervesa. The couple are not allowed any beer and cannot use their own hands all day, if they do bad things will happen in their marriage. This means that the bride and groom must be fed by their parents and even have to request help in the bathroom so as not to use their own hands….. Grim!

We promptly left the island after the lecture via 500 steps back down to the harbour. We all piled on the boat for the 3 hour boat trip back to Puno. Some people sat inside and read books, others sat at the back and chilled in the sunshine but everyone had sun cream on because the sun was blazing. Everyone that is apart from Jacqui, an Aussie girl who sat out in the sun all the way back with no sun cream on at all. Aussie’s live beneath the hole in the O-Zone layer. HELLO!! Her legs were so burnt by the end of the trip you could have fried an egg on them!

We got back into Puno at about 13:00 ish and went out in search of lunch and Wi-Fi. We found both in a place called ‘Colours’ were we holed up for the afternoon trying to catch up on the blog. We did well too and are now totally up to date, until we go to the salt flats and the Atacama desert next week.

We went back to our hotel (lovely hotel too) for a shower and a change before tea. Tonight is the last night that were all together as a group, tomorrow we split in two, half go to Ariuquipa to see the Nazca Lines (check it out on Wikipedia, looks pretty cool) and we’re off to Bolivia.

We all went “Colours” for tea and had a bit of a farewell drink. We we’re quite sad to leave the group, I guess the intensity of these trips forces you to develop relationships quicker than you normally would.