Kayaking on Lake Titicaca

This morning I spent a wonderful hour slowly paddling a kayak from Puno to one of the floating islands. An hour of slowly make my way throw the water, avoiding mostly, but not all, the reeds - I blame the fact that I was paddling a 2 man kayak on my own. :)

An hour of total tranquillity, if you ignore the sound of the outboard on our guide's boat, and which is really easy to do when you can lose yourself in the paddling.

We then spent an hourly on one of the islands, which was very different to the one I visited one Friday - much more developed (there was a small cafe on the island) and setup for tourists; the one on Friday was tiny (maybe about 20 paces across) and a lot less developed. Interesting to see both, where the more touristy of the two felt a lot less like a human zoo and more like a tourist attraction.

The time was spent with two Brits from my hostel who also did the trip (it was arranged via the hostel), which was, as always, more discussion on travel (some useful info on buses in Bolivia, among general banter), with all small side helping of discussion on food from home, another regular topic.

Return to Puno was via a motor boat, similar to the one from my other trips across the lake, which is a lot less tranquil.

Kayaking has been added to my Things To Try Again When I Get Home list; I liked it a lot and it's the highlight of my time on the lake.

The bus to Arequipa

Having someone play music out loud on their phone is annoying when on a short bus journey - imagine my joy of the person sitting next to me for a 6.5 hour journey (Puno to Arequipa) the doing that.

I wasn't unhappy to see her leave at the first stop (Juliaca), after a mercifully short hour.

This post is brought to you by the association of Grumpy (Old) Men.

Experiences

A ((very) large) part of travelling is the experiences you have, be it things you expect to do (visit X location) or the unexpected (random nights out).

Tomorrow's experience is something I've been toying with for the last few days, since I took a proper look at travelling on and around Lake Titicaca. Tomorrow I'm off to kayak to Uros (the floating islands on Titicaca), a place I went to yesterday - but this is all about the journey and not the destination.

Spanish by Spanish people

After the pleasant surprise from a couple of days ago a small reality check....

My home stay on one of the islands on Titicaca was with 5 Spanish girls, where I was the only non native Spanish speaker.

After a month in Cusco and hearing slowly spoken Spanish, trying to understand conversations in Spanish spoken by Spanish people was useful reminder that although it's all Spanish, it is different across the world and people from Spain speak *fast* and slur their words. For a lot of the time I couldn't pick out words, just that they were talking.

It will be interesting to see what the Spanish is like in Bolivia and Chile.

There was another useful reminder that my Spanish isn't all that, but that's for the post I need to write on visiting Titicaca and the islands.

Today's pleasant surprise

The amount of Spanish I was able to speak with the random Italian guy I was sat next to today on the bus from Cusco to Puno.

This weekend I shall mostly be...

... Floating around on Lake Titicaca.

After 4 weeks in and around Cusco I head to Puno tomorrow morning and then spend a few days visiting Titicaca.

Odd sight of the day

Man on the top of an open-top tour bus, with a camera in his hand (so far so good) and what looked a lot like a Go Pro strapped to his head.