Yesterday we were picked up at 7.50am and taken to the dock where we boarded our ferry and began our two day tour of Lake Titicaca! (Lago Titikaka in español). Our first stop was Isla de los Uros, the reed islands and we visited the San Miguel community. The reed islands are absolutely amazing as they are all hand made and are also known as the floating islands, as there is no under water foundation, their whole community, life and world float on the lake on a thick bed of reeds which they, themselves make. We learnt all about how they make them and how they have to keep adding to the reeds and obviously the under layer is soggy, this also means that their houses are raised to avoid dampness. We actually got taken by one of the locals to her reed house where she showed us around (it was just a simple, tiny room with a bed) and let us try on her traditional, brightly coloured clothing! This included a huge, puffy, bright pink skirt, a green jacket, hair pom poms and a bonnet! After this she showed us her beautiful tapestries of life on the reed islands and then we went on a short boat ride around the islands on a row boat, also made out of reeds.

Our next stop, which the reed sailing boat actually took us to, was Utama, the main island in the Uros community. Here we got our passports stamped to say we’d visited the world of Lake Titicaca! Here I met the cutest little girl called Isabel who, even though her first language isn’t Spanish but the language of the incas, Imari, she was chatting away to me in Spanish telling me her name, asking my name and telling me she is five.

We then had a three hour boat ride to Amantani Island where we met Estafa, our Peruvian mum for the night. Estefa then took us to her little house in the island, showed us around and made us some lunch of quinoa soup, then rice potatoes and grilled cheese. We then met her daughter Daisy, before heading across the island to meet up with the rest of our tour group and hike for an hour right up to the very top, to watch the sunset.

After the sunset, we went back to our little house to help prepare dinner. We peeled potatoes for the onion and potato soup and then showed Estefa and Daisy photos of our families. They both said that they loved my blonde hair, as everyone here has black hair, however when I showed them my family with much blonder hair they were so fascinated and also very shocked! Dinner was onion and potato soup and then vegetable curry with rice, all cooked over a little fire.

Then we helped Estefa with some English phrases that she can use with tourists, as normally they don’t speak any Spanish. Suddenly we realised it was party time, which meant that we got to dress up (again hehe) in Estefas traditional clothing, and head to the town party which involved a lot of dancing to local music played by some of the community’s students. The dancing basically involved dancing and jumping round in a circle holding hands and all cheering.

We then went back to the house and had a surprisingly good sleep.

Day two.
We had pancakes with jam (it’s amazing what she can make on her little fire stove) for breakfast and mountain thyme tea, before saying goodbye to Estefa and heading down to the port to sail to Taquille Island.

It took us an hour and when we arrived we walked all the way around the huge island to the main square. It was an absolutely beautiful walk, filled with stunning views of the island and lots of sheep!

Then we went to an outdoor restaurant for lunch where we learnt about the traditional outfits and what different aspects of them symbolise, ie whether they’re single or married etc… We had a delicious lunch of grilled trout before heading back to the boat, and all the way back to Puno.

This evening we went out for dinner with some of our friends from the tour. We went to a restaurant called Balcones del Puno where we ate Alpaca steak and watched an amazing, and sometimes quite intense and scary, show of traditional Peruvian dancers.

Today is the day of our two day lake titicaca tour! We’re off to explore the amante islands and the reed islands and then spend the night with the locals tonight in their huts on the island. We’re up early as we’re both very excited to experience real native island life and to see the beautiful lake. (And so that we have enough time to have breakfast in the glass room over looking the city, at the top of our hotel)

Can’t wait to blog about it all after!

After a lovely nights sleep (in our double beds in our own room!!!) Juliet and I spent the entire morning watching tv episodes on YouTube and snoozing, something we’ve been wanting to do for ages… Absolutely nothing (it’s also something we’re getting very good at).
At lunch time we headed into the town to explore and sort out everything for our next few days of adventure. We first decided to check up on our reservations for our inca express bus to Cusco on the 28th. It was quite a stressful meeting as we soon discovered that we were not actually booked in (even though we paid and booked previously) and that the agency that we booked with might be fake… And they had our passport details as well as our money. The tour lady from the inca express office was nice and friendly and eager to help us. She started ringing up and told us to come back later, as well as assuring us we’d have a place on the bus. Newly stressed and worried about the prospect that we could have paid and given out personal information to a fake company, we headed to the offices of Edgar Adventures (our tour company for tomorrow) hoping that we’d have a better experience checking up on our reservations there. Thankfully they had our reservation and were ready for us to tour the lake tomorrow. With our names saved, they gave us all the information we needed about the tour tomorrow (thank god) and so we left that agency a lot less stressed! After lunch we headed back to the inca express offices with a confirmation email from our maybe-fake-hopefully-not agency and discovered that they had got hold of them and everything was fine, our payment and reservation transferred to the real inca express company!
With all sorted, we’re both so excited about the tour of Lake Titicaca tomorrow. It’s also so weird to think that everything, for the rest of our time as backpackers, is now organised and waiting for us to experience it!
Time flies…

Yesterday morning Juliet and I were so chilled thanks to our lie in and amazing hostel breakfast of banana pancakes with dulce de leche (South American caramel) sauce. We then headed into the town to go to the post office, and ended up in a busy and bustling plaza mayor. It felt like something from the olden days with men in suits reading the newspaper while getting their shoes shined in the middle of the park, families with bread feeding the millions of pigeons around and the cutest old man with a little ice cream stall around his neck. It was actually all very picturesque.

At the post office we bought our stamps, (to get a postcard to the uk it needs three stamps!) posted our postcards… Fingers crossed they arrive everyone… And then headed back to the hostel through the sun, to get our belongings ready for the bus.
This bus was definitely not like the others we’d been on, with a hole for a toilet, a broken tv, non existent air conditioning, and every single person on it asking us what seat we were. Luckily we were 1 and 2 and so had leg room again, however when the bus started moving we realised this might not have been the best option. Arequipa is a beautifully sunny town and the sunlight was beaming in through the windows into an already absolutely boiling bus, with absolutely NO air conditioning or windows. It was so hot I thought I was going to pass out. AND to make matters worse, for the first two to three hours of the journey, we had a speaker (or a shouter if we’re being exact) who was standing in the middle of the bus shouting to everyone about illnesses and diet, he even had flash cards. Juliet and I put our iPods in so loud and prayed that it would get cooler…
Eventually the shouter finished his talk and the sun started to fade as we travelled further South and the desert surroundings were replaced with beautiful lakes and hills and the journey got a lot better – we even arrived early for the first time in South American bus history!
All was good and our travel company for the lake had arranged to pick us up from the bus station and take us to our hostel so we didn’t need to worry about anything. As we were early we waited, and waited, and waited for then to arrive. Forty five minutes passed and it was getting ridiculous considering the hostel is only ten minutes away. We then used a pay phone and rang them to find out that we weren’t on their system but they’d double check and call us back. Calling us back wasn’t getting us out of the bus station so Juliet and I decided to just get a taxi… Over an hour after we arrived at the station. It was 9.30pm by the time we arrived at our hostel which is actually a hotel! (Although if everything had gone to plan we could’ve been there much earlier) Juliet and I have our own (tiny) room, with two double beds and so we’re extremely happy this morning after a much needed sleep, for once not in a bunk bed!
Today when we finally get out of bed we’re planning on visiting the travel company to confirm our tour tomorrow… Fingers crossed we’re on their system for this!

This morning at 3am… Yes 3am! We were picked up to begin our tour of the Colca Canyon. The Colca Canyon is a canyon of the Colca River in southern Peru. It is Peru’s third most-visited tourist destination with about 120,000 visitors annually, AND with a depth of 13,650 ft (4,160 m), it is more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. It was about a three hour drive there from Arequipa, the town we’re staying in, and so obviously we fell asleep as soon as we got on the bus! When we arrived at our first destination, we were all happy to hear the words Desayuno! (breakfast) and hurriedly went into the warmth for hot tea and warm bread… With a view.

After this we travelled into the Canyon to explore! Our first stop here was the Cañon del Colca, the most famous viewing spot in the Colca Canyon as it is home to the Condor bird.

The Condor bird sits at about a metre tall, it has a wing span of 3 to 4 metres and it is the heaviest bird in the world… And we were looking into a valley filled with them swooping within the canyon. The were unbelievable, so graceful for such big birds and so blissfully unaware (either that it they didn’t care) about the thousands of tourists reaching out to them and taking photos.

At the canyon there were also market stalls and walk ways so that you could explore every possible view of the colca.
Our next stop was a look out point over looking pre inca ruins, which are now fields for corn, wheat, maze and quinoa.

It also had a small Peruvian market with the cutest stall lady who let Juliet and I try the sour cactus fruit (absolutely delicious) and showed us all of her handmade creations.

We then went to a huge Peruvian market where Juliet bought a poncho!!! (Atlast) I just need to buy one now and then we’re set for our inca trail! At the market we also tried a Colca Canyon version of pisco sours (pisco sours are a Peruvian alcoholic drink made with pisco, lemon juice and egg whites) the colca version, colca sours have the sour cactus juice (that we tried before) instead of lime juice.
Then we went to the thermal baths, however it was so hot that we didn’t feel like actually going in. Instead Juliet and I found a spot on a rock over looking the river, the canyon and the beautiful sunshine – it was so peaceful and absolutely perfect.
Our next stop was lunch (thank god, we were so hungry from our early breakfast!) and it was an all you can eat buffet before our second long bus journey of the day, back to Arequipa.
On the way back we passed a massive field filled with Alpacas and Lamas, all grazing in herds. All the way back to Arequipa we passed Peruvians working in the corn fields, walking along with donkeys as mules carrying the corn and herding cows. It was a real working environment in a beautiful canyon and we had a great (if very very full day) tour of it all.

Two days ago Juliet and I started our depressing journey away from the beautiful Mancora. The South American timing actually started before we even left when the time on our bus ticket said 4.30pm departure and on arriving at 4pm we learnt that this was actually 4.30 from Tumbes, a town about two hours away, meaning our bus wasn’t till 6.30. So at 6pm we were back at the bus station watching the Peruvian version of Gladiators (I actually got really into it) and at about 7.45pm our bus finally arrived. Already over an hour late, our 18 hour bus soon turned into a even more delayed bus and 21 hours later we arrived in Lima. Thankfully for that very long journey, Juliet and I had booked the front seats of first class meaning we had bigger, more reclinable seats, with no one putting there’s back into our leg room. After a three hour wait at the bus stop we then piled onto our next bus (this time not first class… Booh, but still at the front) for a fifteen hour bus ride. Unfortunately the traffic was so bad getting out of Lima we knew we’d be delayed. Once we’d been travelling for 16 hours we stopped in a tiny run down town in the middle of the desert – we’d been driving through desert land practically the whole journey. We thought we’d arrived and actually got off the bus with all our stuff, only to find out this was a chemical toilet stop (incase the bus toilet was driving you crazy) and a place to buy some food (if the bus food was also driving you crazy). We were told we had another two hours until our destination and the rest of the journey was actually really pleasant. The desert, run down buildings and junkyards covered in dust were substituted for amazing greenery, fields of corn and flowers with people working in them, and roads on the edges of huge canyons overlooking villages placed inside. Three and a half hours later.. (Seriously South America) we finally arrived in Arequipa! So just so we can get a grasp of Peruvian timings. 4.30pm leave actually means 6.30 which actually means 7.45. 18 hours are actually 21 hours. 15 equals 18.5 and 2 equals 3.5. But who cares, we’re here and Arequipa is a beautifully cute town. It actually took our bus driver so so so long to find our hostel as it’s down a tiny street which no one seems to know (we were first turned down by two taxi drivers when we told them the address) but we’re swiftly brushing over that detail. We went to the super market which is right next door and made ourselves a delicious dinner of salmon in soya sauce and vegetable fried rice and have booked ourselves two great tours for the next two days. (Two days and two nights on a bus have made me so happy about everything that’s not a bus)
We have a 3am start tomorrow, for a very very full day touring and hiking the canyon and then the next day we’re canoeing in the canyon!
After five days relaxing by the pool, and two days sitting on a bus, we’re ready to be active again! Bring on the next few weeks.

After a wonderfully early night, half a day of sunbathing, packing and then a huuuuuge platter of sushi (a huge delicious platter), it is now time to say good bye to the beautiful Mancora and the amazing Loki hostel. I really needed these few days in the sunshine (I was beginning to feel anaemic) to top up our tans but also to relax and do absolutely nothing after three months of doing absolutely everything! It’s now go time again and after our two over night, 18+ hour busses (kill me now) we have a lot of exciting adventures planned. Hiking in the Colca canyon, lake Titicaca, the inca trail and volunteer work – it’s time to be busy again and we’re definitely ready after our early nights and lazy days.
We just need to survive these two unbelievably long busses first… Wish us luck!

This morning when I woke up (actually ridiculously early) the hostel was empty, no music from the bar, no one in the pool and no one on the sunbeds and it was absolutely beautiful and so peaceful… I’m really going to miss this place when we leave tomorrow.

At 2pm, after a morning on sunbathing, it was time for the England v Uruguay game. With our hostel being mostly English staff and mostly English guests, the atmosphere was always going to be great.

That with the fact that our hostel has the biggest screen in the town so people from all over come to watch the game, and the big screen is right above a huge open plan bar with loads of seats… AND happy hour happened to be right while the game was on. Safe to say there were a lot of drunk English men ready to see England win.
The funny thing about South Americans is that even though there are feuds and have been rivalries between countries, the support each other massively. This means that the handful of Uruguay supporters watching the match earlier, screaming and shouting, head to toe in paint and Uruguay outfits, might not have actually been from Uruguay. They could have been from any other South American country but the fact is that they’re South American, and they want South America to win. So when Suarez scored his first goal, they went crazy, banging their fists on the tables, screaming, running around and shouting in whatever language they could at the screen. (Which to our delight, had English commentary today so we actually knew what was going on).
When Rooney then scored making it one all, I literally thought the bar was going to explode, obviously our English celebration had to be bigger than the Uruguayan but it was ridiculous! The English avid football fans were ridiculously drunk by this point and had spent the most part of the game swearing and shouting curses at the screen but now they were ecstatic. One of them (the most drunk by far) even jumped up onto the table, started pouring all of his three massive beer bottles of beer all over everyone and himself, screaming and chanting, until he slipped (idiot) and fell onto the floor, smash onto the concrete on top of his three beer bottles which subsequently smashed everywhere too (it’s surprisingly that he wasn’t actually injured after it… Bloody English).

Just before the game finished (a quick reminder for those who didn’t see the game) Suarez scored again and I don’t know who I was more scared of, the Uruguayan fans who now went crazy slamming their fists and bodies and heads on the tables (honestly I thought the table was going to break), OR the English fans who we’re fuming, swearing about the ref, the other team, the fact that someone somewhere was off side, kicking things. Anyways Juliet and I found if absolutely hilarious, and scuttered away back to our sunbeds before anyone noticed we were actually laughing hysterically about how terrible England were and how much everyone seemed to be over reacting. All I can say is GO CHILE (incase anyone doesn’t know I’m a newly converted Chilean fan and I’m backing them to win the World Cup).

This evening Juliet and I went out for pizza before enjoying our last night in Loki hostel, and in Mancora for that matter. The next two nights are going to be spent on busses and so tonight (as usual) we’re having an early night and making the most of a nice place to sleep!

When we do absolutely nothing all day (except relaxing) the vast majority of my blogs end up being about food… Well that and the fact that Juliet and I were doing our 7 minute indoor workouts (trying to slightly prepare for the inca trail) when our new roommate walked in and actually laughed at us… (Obviously in envy at how impressive and athletic we looked doing press ups in our pajamas.)
Today I spent most of the day on FaceTime, catching up with friends and family from home, which actually gave my sunburn a chance to relax and I’m now ready for a full day of hard core tanning tomorrow.
Now for the food blog…
This evening Juliet and I decided to try our luck at the local sushi restaurant. It was delicious and we were so happy with our choice, I had California rolls with tempura shrimp instead of normal shrimp, and then tuna maki with cream cheese, avocado and Japanese spicy mayonnaise… So good!

Being our usual selves when we saw a sushi desert on the menu, we just had to have it and this time it was Choco Maki.

The chocolate fudge sauce with pecans and prunes would be enough but it was combined with sushi rice and seaweed to make a proper sushi roll and it was… Dreadful. Absolutely disgusting. We actually had trouble keeping it down but forced ourselves to eat it so as not to offend the sushi chef.

The pictures actually do it a lot more justice than it deserves but oh well… It was hilariously undelicious, a weirdly interesting end to the night and who else can say they’ve tried chocolate sushi ay?!

Today Julie and I were first out on the sunbeds, they were all lined up ready to be used but no one was on them so we decided someone had to be first, and today it would be us. We picked the only two in the sunshine but within an hour they had all filled up and we were so happy we’d made claims to ours early on. Being first in the sun also meant that we were in the sun for a very long time today, it was an absolutely beautiful day, about thirty degrees, not a cloud in the sky and of course I got burnt. If I was any one else in my family (especially my sister) I would be an amazing bronzed golden colour right now, but instead I am lobster red… It’s quite a good look, especially when a random American man comes up to you in the street shouting OH MY GAAAAD, you are SO red, yes thank you I already knew that.
Apart from the slight suncream mishap (it’s also just my chest and tummy that are burnt so with a high neck top it’s really not so bad) it’s been a lovely, relaxing day by the pool, enjoying the beautiful Peruvian sunshine.

This evening we decided to try our luck in a vegetarian restaurant, it was the only one on the street with actual customers and the menu did look quite appetising. The food, just as the menu suggested, was actually really yummy, especially considering I was eating food mostly consisting of lentils, however everything else was vegetables which, ofcourse, I was extremely happy about and Juliet and I have both decided we will be going back there. (Plus it was super cheap and healthy which is always a bonus for backpackers).

It’s 8.20pm and once again, at this amazingly early hour, Julie and I are ready for bed. Lying in the sun all day really is exhausting and after being on the go, none stop for three months already, and having the next month filled with exploring, hiking and volunteer working, we really do need these five days to just chill and do nothing… And that’s exactly what we’re going to do!