Lake Titicaca, Puno Peru

Happy Easter from the rabbit I saw in the most desolate area of Bolivia and Happy Birthday to you Dad, Dennis and Aunt Anne. Sending you love and birthday wishes from Peru.

I have spent Easter Weekend at Lake Titicaca. Yup, I spelt that correctly and it sounds like it is spelt, so I had to come to this area to see what it is all about. Well it is another lovely area. I am now in Peru in the town of Puno which is on Lake Titicaca. I arrived on Good Friday and was able to witness a Good Friday procession. The statues used in the procession were interesting. My favorite was the last one of I believe Mary all in black and it was neat because it was only carried and surrounded by women.

I took a boat trip out to a couple of the islands on Lake Titicaca, (Uros and Taquile). The first one was really cool. It was a series of floating islands where a couple of hundred people live. Every two weeks they have to cover it with new reeds to keep it from rotting.

South America countries have really kept their traditions. When you visit these places the people are not dressed in their old traditional garb to entertain you, but are dressed that way because that is who they are. Women wear bowler hats with long dark braids in their hair and poufy skirts. On the second island I visited (Taquile) the men wear toques of solid red if they are married and red and white if they are single. The men knit the hats and women weave belts for them to wear. Each year the woman makes her husband a new belt and each year it has a different symbol added to it so it tells the family history, births, deaths, good harvests etc, really interesting. So the girls sell the tourists bracelets but it is really for them to practice their weaving skills so by the time they are an adult they can strive to make their husband a good belt. So nieces and nephews you are getting “practice” bracelets.

I made it to mass from Easter Sunday. It was a lovely church full of white flowers everywhere. I was surprised there were not too many people there and I was the only foreigner, but they did have lots of masses throughout the morning. Anyway at “peace time” the woman beside me gave me a hug and a kiss, not a handshake. I said my little thank you pray as for some reason I was up really early this morning and double checked with the hostel staff to see how much my bill was, as I needed money from the ATM. Upon doing this the woman called to confirm my bus ticket for the next day to find out that the busses would not be running for two days as there will be road blocks on Monday and Tuesday. She said I could get to Cuzco today or Wednesday. I said I needed to leave today as I fly from Cuzco on Sunday and would like as many days as possible for Machu Picchu and the area. She made some calls and got me on to a night bus that will leave tonight at 10pm hopefully missing the road blocks. I got the second last seat out of Puno, so I said my little prayer of thanks at church this morning. It was really random that we found out this was happening. I tried to get out Bolivia and their road blocks to avoid lost time and now it is happening again. This time it is because the government wants to set off bombs for testing and the miners don’t want them to do it as it will cause environmental damage. So they are protesting.

Here are the photos from Lake Titicaca, Puno, Peru.
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