Puno, Peru

So it's been almost a week since I've left the States, but it feels like we've been here for about a month. I think I can say by now that Peru is by far one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to. The mountains are unreal - it still seems to me like someone painted them in - and absolutely everywhere we travel everything is green and alive, although that might have something to do with the fact that it's the rainy season (apparently summer and winter don't exist here, only "rainy" and "dry" season).

On Friday (yesterday) we left in the morning on a "tourist" bus from Cusco to Puno. We had planned on taking a regular bus overnight, but the owner of our hostel in Cusco told us they weren't very comfortable and that we would get into Puno around 3 or 4 in the morning and would have to wait around until noon to get into our next hostel. We decided that probably wasn't the safest idea so we took this other bus instead, which ended up being great because it stopped at a few cool sites along the way (including another Incan city) and the entire ride was through the mountains so we would have missed out on some amazing views.

Puno itself has definitely been an interesting experience. We didn't plan it intentionally, but we ended up coming here over a huge festival weekend in the city (Festivadad Virgen de la Candelaria), and there have literally been marching bands in traditional costume in the streets every minute of the day. We thought they stopped around 3 am, only to be woken up by the same exact music right outside of our hostel at 6. Pretty crazy, but cool at the same time to see so many people celebrating in one place (kind of reminded me of inaguration... except a lot more music and a lot less police).

We also took a tour of these floating islands in the middle of the lake on which the city is located (Lake Titicaca, highest lake in the world) which is something I've been interested in for a while. Basically back in the day some of the indigenous people from the mainland decided to build these islands (in order to protect themselves from other populations) out of this water grass (and they literally float but are connected to one another so they don't separate). When we first got to one of the islands they explained how they were made and how the people lived on them, and afterwards we got to walk around a little bit and saw the inside of this guy's house (room). He told us about his life and then led us outside where bunch of people were selling jewelry, art, etc. that they had made (and pretty forcefully). It was really interesting to see how these people live, but I couldn't help but feel this sense of mutual exploitation. I guess it's hard to describe, but on one hand I felt like we were intruding on their culture and their everyday lives, but on the other hand I felt like they were taking adventage of us as tourists and in doing so exploiting their own culture. I'm not really sure how to put it well, but everyone in the group was kind of feeling the same way.

Anyway, it was a good experience, but we're ready to leave the craziness of the fesitval in Puno and get to the beach in Chile! We're about to leave on an overnight bus to the border of Peru and Chile and should be in Arica in the morning.

Hope all is well in the States, besos!!!!

View coming into Puno