Saturday, December 1st, 2007 Day Tour of Lake Titicaca, Peruvian wedding and off to Cusco
We woke up super early to catch the bus to the boat tour. We drove to the port and every piled onto the boat to begin our day long trip on Lake Titicaca. Our first stop was the Islands of the Uros, a series of 39 man made floating islands. They are built out of a reed and mud from the bottom of the lake mixture with layered reeds on top to form the ground. A group of about 3 families live on each island in small houses made out of reeds. The community form about 600 years ago to escape the wars on the land surrounding the lake and survived by fishing and gardening on the island. But now they survive mostly on tourism. It was sad to see how dependent they were, but at the same time it was an incredibly interesting way of life.
Next we had a 2 hour boat ride to another natural island on the Lake, Island . This island has about 500 residents and they survive on agriculture and selling their woven goods. We ate lunch on the island overlooking the lake covered by a white blanket for shade. It seemed just like on Survivor!
After this stop I slept on the 3 hour ride back to Puno. By the time we arrived it was about 6 pm. Everyone else went to get dinner but I wasn’t hungry so I went to the cathedral to go to mass. But when I got there and sat down, a man came out and announced that the Cathedral as being closed to the public because there was going to be an ordination! So I headed out and went to find my friends at dinner but as I was walking out I overheard a Peruvian woman talking to her young son about how they were going to walk to the other church to go to mass. I turned around and asked her if there was another mass and if I could join them. So I walked with them a couple blocks to another church. When we walked in we saw that instead of mass, it was a Peruvian wedding! It was especially the same as the Chilean wedding but with really cheesy music (i.e. My Heart Will Go On from Titanic etc.). In the hopes that there would also be a mass, I decided to stick around but in the end they only had communion for the bride and groom. So I didn’t get to go to mass, but I got to see another South American wedding!!
After the wedding I started walking back to the hostel when I ran into an awesome parade marching through the pedestrian street. It was the closest parade I’ve seen to a Mardi Gras parade minus the huge floats. Back at the hostel, we asked the woman working if she knew about any hostels in Cusco that were good and a few minutes later she came back with a man who started talking to us about our trip to Cusco and Machu Picchu. Come to find out, he is a tourism agent and after talking to us about our plans, he offered us a deal for the rest of our trip. It included: a day tour of the Sacred Valley, the car/train ride to Aguas Calientes, the bus to Machu Picchu, the $40 entrance fee into Machu Picchu, two nights in a hostel in Aguas Calientes including breakfast both days and the bus ride from Cusco back to Tacna, all for only $136 a person! It was such a good deal and he seemed legitimate, so when he told us that we could pay half up front and that he was going to go with us to Cusco to organize everything, we decided to go with it! So we went to the bus station with our guide and got on the bus at 9 pm to Cusco!
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