queso grande y senor bag

quechua update- turns out they speak aymara on the island we´re staying on tomorrow night, so they won´t actually appreciate my quechua attempts, but i´m going to do it anyway.

now in puno, had a pretty boring journey here, up early with hangovers after another night at the hard rock cafe. and yes i don´t remember much of it. it´s the altitude... really nice to be in peru, and back in puno which is where we started our bike ride from 2 years ago. it´s not as mental as i remember, but we were suffering from altitude then and there was a big parade going through the town. to my delight, this parade happened again tonight with the same song, i think it must be in honour of me being here. we had a drink in a pub which boosted morale as everyone was flagging a bit from hangovers and day of bus. i gave some money to a homeless woman, and me and abi talked about how the poverty over here hadn´t really hit us properly yet even though obviously we´d noticed it a lot, but coming into puno from la paz there is some really bleak landscape with women just sitting at the side of the road, or in the middle of a field. the scenery is really stunning, huge skies and mountains and great clouds (got some good photos for your cloud club clare), but you wonder how they survive and if they are happy and what do they think about. they seem content, but that´s coming from my privileged western background whizzing past on a bus, and i would like to speak to them properly to see how they feel. in a way, perhaps living hand to mouth, and with more of a community and family focus means you are more content, you don´t have to think about all the things that confuse you like which car to drive, or restaurant to go to, or what mobile phone contract to get. and having less possessions means you must value things so much more, we saw a boy buy a few marbles in la paz from a little street stall, he wanted the whole bag but couldn´t afford it, so he just got a few, and he ran off really happy with them.

we just had dinner in the hotel, we all ordered pasta to keep it quick and easy, but it took 1.5 hours to arrive. they made a phone call and then a man appeared outside and delivered something, and 20 minutes after, we had our pasta. it was cold and a bit stuck together, but it was food. and service is slow over here, you have to be patient. they brought a nice candlestick to appease us while we waited. we tried to eat it.

tomorrow we go and do our night on an island in lake titicaca, they play football with us apparently, that´ll be interesting at altitude, then we have a party, then we sleep in their little straw houses, then come back the next day. i´m really excited about this. we´re going to take a little present, like a tin of tuna or beans for them.

sad that some of the group aren´t with us anymore, we did a toast to them when we had our beer. jen wanted a particular mention, for saying someone looked like a bogey last night. it seemed like a good description after a caipirinha. off for an early night now in preparation for island trip. xx