juli

my trip around lake titicaca was so, so fun. lake titicaca is a mangled spanish version of the the quechua name for the lake, which is "titijala". "titi" means puma, and "jala" means rock. it's funny that the spanish call it titicaca because caca means poo in spanish.

the first stop on the tour was the floating islands of uros. some people call them the floating tourist traps, but i still thought they were really cool. there are about 30 of these islands, and they are all man made, constructed entirely from the totoro reed. the indigenous communities that live there just keep layering down more reeds every couple of weeks. we all wandered around the islands and then got to ride in a totoro reed boat over to the main island. i think if i had to live on one of these islands, i'd probably go insane from boredom, but it was a fun place to visit.

next we had a three hour boat ride over to amantani island. i had so much fun on the boat ride. i don't get to hang out and speak english that much, and a bunch of us sat on the roof of the boat and just hung out an talked for the whole trip. there was a really cool couple from ireland, an american women, a guy from chile, a couple from argentina, two serbs, two italians, and a girl from japan.
amantani island
has about 4,000 families divided into 8 communities. the primary language is quechua, but many people also speak spanish as a second language. there were a lot of wheat, quinuoa, and corn fields on the island seperated by stone walls. footpaths meandered between the fields and houses scattered around the island, and all the women still wore their traditional clothing.
part of our tour involved a homestay with a local family. my family was so nice. the kids were super friendly and kept hugging me and holding my hands. it was really great. their house was made from adobe bricks with a corregated steel roof. in their garden they were growing corn, beans, and quinuoa, and for lunch, my host mom made quinuoa soup from the garden. it was delicious.
right now around lago titicaca, there is a huge festival going on called candelaria. our host families took us to the main plaza on amantani to participate in the festivities. hands down, this was the craziest party i have ever been to. my pictures really don't do the scene justice. so, this was a pretty little plaza, and there were 8 bands playing at the same time. sometimes the bands were only 10 feet apart, so that if you stood between them all you heard was noise. all the young people of amantani were dressed up in these wild outfits and doing some type of coordinated dancing to the music, such that each band had its own wild group of drunken teenagers dancing in front of it.
because it was so hot, when people poured beer into cups, they got a lot of foam. the young people would chug down these little cups of beer and then fling the foam on the ground before they continued to dance. you might be able to tell from this photo that there are two bands playing right ontop of each other. in the forground is a band all in blue, and then in the background, right next to them in another band all in white. the island was without electricity, so everything came to a stop around 7:30 when the sun went down. my host mom gave me a candle when we were back at the house.
the next day we went to visit taquile island. the men on taquile do a ton of knitting, and the knitted hats they wear donote their rank and marital status. a hat with a white tip meant that a man was single, a long colored hat meant he was married, and a short knit hat, with a felt hat ontop signified that a man was a community leader. the men carried special purses for coca leaves, and when they wanted to great someone, they gave them a handful of coca leaves. sort of like saying hello. we ate lunch there and then headed back to puno.

today i did a short day (50 miles)to the town of juli. this guy Blander ran into me near puno and rode the whole way to juli with me, then turned around and rode back to puno. so he will have ridden 100 miles today. crazy, huh? he's 19 years old and is training to be in the army cuz he likes shooting guns. it's funny cuz when you pay to do these tourist tours, it's a little awkward because you feel like a lot of your interacations with the local people are them trying to sell you stuff. but when you bike tour people just like hanging out with you.
so... i've decided that i want to slow down and do more tourist stuff and not worry about getting to tierra del fuego before winter. it was a real bumber in ecuador cuz there was a lot of fun stuff to do, but i didn't have time. i think now i'm just going to bike from tourist attraction to tourist attraction. should be more fun, and i'll get to see more than just the highway. i'm still going to be traveling south though. ok, hope everyone is good. love,
-jessie