Our first stop was Puno and things got started with a bang - literally, my facewash exploded hitting me right in the eyes because of the altitude (12,562 ft above sea level)...it kinda burned. The city of Puno is a little ugly, but it is the jumping off point for Lake Titikaka, which in addition to having a fantastic name is also the world's highest navigable body of water.
We endured a painfully slow three hour ride on a lancha across the lake (poor D-Ho sat next to the Italian couple that were on top of each other making out almost the entire time and Rob & I were next to a dude that fell asleep with his hairy ass crack showing). Isla Tequille was our ultimate destination and it was probably my favorite stop on the trip. The island is absolutely charming, beautiful and peaceful. The first thing we did was grab lunch (no big surprise there). All meals in Tequille consist of the following: Quinoa soup to start, Trout for the entree & french fries for dessert. I loved it.
The coolest thing about Tequille is that most tour groups only stop here for lunch and then they take the gringos to other islands or back to Puno. Because we decided to stay the night, we basically had the entire island to ourselves. There are no hostels here, so we found our home for the evening when an adorable 10-yr old girl named Natalia found us and asked if we wanted to stay in her home. Our home on the island, which did not have running water and only limited electricty, was amazing. Unfortunately, there are no street names, so all I can tell you is that if you ever have the opportunity to go to Tequille, ask for Natalia, she lives on Scrunchy Sheep Lane (we came up with the street name ourselves because the house had a bunch of scary sheep running around with scrunchies on their heads).
We spent the day roaming the island and taking a million pics. A definite highlight was when these two little boys came running up to us and jumped in our photo shoot. Most of the time the kids ask if you want a photo with them for "Un Sol" (roughly 30 cents), but these guys didn't ask - they just jumped right in. After the photo shoot, we gave them each a sol and they went running away - too cute.
The family made dinner for us and we had a very romantic meal by candle light. The three of us did pretty well braving the altitude, no vomiting and only minor headaches...but I think the combination of the altitude and the coca tea did have some interesting effects on us. We broke into song several times (I think Lisa Loeb would be incredibly proud that we could all sing nearly every word to Stay). We had some slip-ups in English:
Crystal: (Insert Move Title) won a bunch of awards at Sunset (um, I meant Sundance)
Crystal: You little house breaker (um, I meant home wrecker)
Robyn: Upon winning one of many card games exclaimed "See ya later, Crocodile" (how about Alligator)
Robyn: Vamonos Chicanas (oops - meant chicas)
D-Ho: In GW fashion said "what comes around goes around"
D-Ho: My Spanish isn't that great, so i wasn't sure what that guy was saying...Robyn then pointed out that the guy had been speaking in English :)
All our friends that went to school in Tucson will appreciate that we named the locals on Tequille "T-Locs"...of course, then we scared ourselves before bed by making up a story about the T-Loc monster. After freaking ourselves out, we all decided it would be best to walk to the bathroom together with our pencil light shining the way. We were brave enough to turn off the light (probably one of only a few lights on in the entire island) on the way back to our room and check out the stars. I swear I have never seen so many stars in my entire life. It was gorgeous.
We left the following day around 2PM after learning a lot about each other (who knew that Robyn has flossed her teeth with paper?), many laughs (in the future I will not dare Deanna to light her bush tea on fire), a trip to the T-Loc beach and a couple of pretty bad sunburns.
Next stop was the precious town of Cusco. We didn't get into our hotel until 4AM, so we woke up late and found a nice balcony on which to eat lunch and drink some Cusquenos. Cusco is really adorable. The plaza is great, except for the people yelling at you about massages, manicures and free drinks.
Spent our time walking around and buying some essentials: Aloe Vera & friendship hats (Rob & I needed to both heal & cover- up our serious sunburns), Friendship Bracelets (D-Ho & Rob were clever enough to figure out these tricky rope things) and of course a couple more decks of cards so we could play progressive rummy.
On Tuesday, we jumped on a train to the Mach (aka Machu Pichu). Actually, it wasn't that easy...we didn't purchase our tickets the day before, so we had to take a cab to a town 1.5hrs from Cusco & grab the train from there. It worked out well because we got to see some of the Andean hillside and most importantly, we got to rock to our cab driver Boris's Infinite Playlist: Mr. Jones, Two Princes, Wonderwall, Wannabe, Zombie, I Will Always Love You and many other of our fav hits from the 90s.
The Mach is quite the place. Ruins (or non-ruins as D pointed out), alpaca running around & low-hanging clouds surrounding the mountains makes it feel like you are on another planet. Deanna had quite the theory on Machu Pichu...(can't figure out how to upload the video right now, but will give it a shot from work tomorrow)
We were temporarily interuppted from our tour de Mach, when a group of young boys caught a look at Robyn's smiley eyes (the boys luv Robs even when she is crying from allergies). Somehow I got caught in the photo shoot as well...literally there were probably 50 kids that took pics with us gringas. It probably wasn't appropriate, but after the 25th kid I had to ask for "un sol"...fortunately, they laughed. Deanna sneaked away and captured the moment for us (still not sure how u escaped that one D-Ho!)
I am boring myself with the blog now...so here are some of my fav pics
Will try another post later in the week to cover Thanksgiving in Arequipa and Paragliding in Lima. Peace Out Kids!
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