Best laid plans and Lake Boobypoopoo

Mau: I´m writing from Puno tonight. We wanted to update the blog a few nights ago but as usual we keep running into speed bumps. The nature of the beast traveling through developing countries... always unexpected problems.

Today we took a boat tour of the Peruana part of lake Titikaka. The tour guide explained that the lake straddled the Peru and Bolivian border and the best way to remember the name of the lake was the Titi part was in Peru and the Kaka part was in Bolivia. Obviously he was Peruano. We had to get up pretty early to catch the boat so I forgot the camera! (i hate myself!!!!) An of course it was quite beautiful. The lake reminds me of Lake Tahoe but in the altiplano, kinda of like Elephant Butte in NM. The water was crystal clear. We visited the floating islands of the Uros indians and another island Taquile. The floating islands were amazing. Although the lake was not so deep around the floating islands the reed islands averaged 9 feet deep in reeds. The islands were kind of spongy to walk on and several hundred Uros indians still live there after over 500 years. Taquile is pretty amazing too since it´s avoided entering even the 20th century except for a few items like a large satilite tv dish and some scattered solar panels. The islanders are pretty isolated and seem to like it like that.

One of the bigger speed bumps we have run into was a bus strike in Puno and Juliaca that started Monday and ended Wednesday so we were stuck in Cuzco a few extra days. We were worried it might have continued on longer when we watched the news Tues night and saw the bus drivers had blocked the roads and burned out two cars on the highway. There was not other way to leave Cuzco if we still intended to continue on to Lake Titikaka and Bolivia. Needless to stay we made it out of Cuzco Wednesday.

But worse than the bus strike is the riots going on in La Paz, Bolivia. A Brazilian couple we met on the lake tour today just made it to Puno from Bolivia and they had an incredible time trying to get from La Paz to Copacabana to Puno they mentioned having to spend a lot of money to get a wreck of car to drive them to the border and the car had hot ashes dumped on them at one point.

We looked into getting bus tickets to Copacabana (in Bolivia) tomorrow but the bus companies aren`t selling tickets there because they cannot get over the border. The alternative was to take a colectivo van to the border then walk 7km to the next colectivo with our packs. And then there`s no guarentee for our saftey. So we may have to write off Bolivia which includes the cool part of lake Titicaca and Salar de Uyuni down south. Seems to be just too dangerous or too much trouble and potential for getting stuck there. I´m too old for an adventure lifestyle.

We`re considering visiting Chile and possibly still seeing Salar de Uyuni from the Chilean side. Tomorrow we are leaving Puno back to Arequipa and then to the coast. We`ll keep you posted.