Lake Titicaca

The final week of my program in Peru lead me to a week spent at Lake Titicaca (yes it sounds silly, but it's still fun to say a million times). A friend of mine who had taken spanish classes with me in Cusco was also on this trip, and in typical Peruvian fashion things started out eerily. We were told to show up at the school by 7 to make sure we got to our 7:30 bus on time. Come 7:45 the volunteer coordinator at the school finally shows up to take us to the bus. But about ten minutes into the drive I realize we are too far outside the city to be heading to a bus station. 45 minutes later we arrive at the first stop on the 8 hour bus tour to Lake Titicaca. Our coordinator had shown up so late that he was forced to drive us to the first stop of this bus ride, almost an hour outside the city. Classic Peru.

Lake Titicaca, as they told us about a gazillion times, is the highest navigable lake in the world. Basically it's just at a really high altitude, and it plays with your head when you get down to the water thinking it's sea level but you're still at 12,000 feet. Our first day we had a quick trip to the floating islands of the lake, a small community of people who literally live on floating little islands made of tightly bound straw. They float about 100ft above the sea floor, and there are about twenty people per little island. These people also never brush their teeth, but because they chew on the local brush (taste like celery) they have the cleanest teeth 'Ive ever seen.

That night we arrived at one of the small islands within the lake, and each set of friends in our group was placed with a local family where we would spend the night. They made us soup and cooked dinner, and after we all took a hike to the highest point of the island. The views were incredible, mountains for the entire 360 degree view; from this point you could see so far across the lake the mountains we saw were a part of Bolivia (60% of Lake Titicaca belongs to Peru, the other 40% to Bolivia).

The next day lead us to another small island, but that night my friend and I were the only two people to stay the night. Definitely worth not be able to shower for another 24 hours. We walked down to the beach and along the rocks, had some incredible food, and watched one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen.

Our final day we went back to the mainland, but not before our final decent to the dock--walking down 500 stairs. It wasn't bad at all going down, but there were locals carrying 50lbs sacks of sugar and flour up those stairs. God help them, I could never do that. We got back to the hostel for the night, finally were able to take a shower, and then headed back to Lima the next day out of the sketchiest airport in the world (just google Juliaca airport). And with that my Peruvian adventures ended, only to bring more fun as I headed off to Argentina.