Ahhh Lake Titicaca. Well, we arrived I to Puno late in the afternoon and graves a taxi to our hotel, Antiqua Hotel. We were stoked at the beds and after going three days without a shower... We all claimed they were te best showers we have had in Peru. Pressure and hot water is enough to make you jump with joy here in Peru. Heaven.

The next morning we headed to the docks and all we were told was that our homestay hosts were Rebecca and Lupe, who were dear friends of my friend Kelly Wilkinson. Once at the dock, we were told that the ferry wasn't available, so we were going to join a tour group for transportation (at least that was what my Spanish told me...)

Big Mistake. We piled onto a boat and were faced with the reality of our tour guide. Nice guy, but we soon realized we were going to be on a "forced march" as my mom like to say for the next three days.

The first stop our boat made was to the "Uros Islands." It's in quotes, because we later found out that we were hoodwinked and this island we visited was infant NOT part of the Uros Islands. The Uros Islands are a series of hundreds of floating Reed islands made hundreds of years ago to escape the Spanish. To this day, hundreds of families live on these islands. The real islands (which I visited after our forced march) were pretty amazing.

Back to he fakie. The island that we were brought to on the tour was literally the size of half a soccer field. It didn't seem like anyone lived there. We got a half hour touristy presentation and then walked around (taking 3 minutes) and were hacked touristy crap. Sorry mom, no reed mobile for you.

Alas, back on he boat, we all hoped for a better experience on our next stop, the Island of Amantani.

Here is where he experience takes a swing for... The BETTER! We arrived to the Amantani dock, stepped off and the first woman and child I saw I asked... "Rebeca y Lupe???" The smiled. Bingo. Rebeca is a sweet lady about half the height of am and her daughter is friendly and full of giggles. The two live alone. I am not sure about the father/ husband figure as the last homestay family we stayed with ha a deadbeat and drunk dad that was no longer around. Alas, Rebeca does have 4 other children that live in other places in Peru and Argentina. They welcomed us, showed us our cute room with colorful painted walls, brad spreads and all.

We had another great lunch. Told we were to meet our Tour Guide at the main square to climb to the highest point on the island, we decided that we wanted to do things on our own time. Rebecca offered up her daughter as our little guide and we headed out on our own. Heading towards town square we got a feel for the sleepy island. It was quitet, and every view overlooked lake titicaca. We hiked up towards town square and bought water and a few minutes at a volleyball game. Then we headed up and up and up!

Arriving at the top of the island and the house of Pachatata (father earth) the view was beautiful. With enough time for pictures and to hang a bit, we caught the sunset. It was well worth the hike. After a beauty session of Lupe braiding my hair, we headed down for dinner and a good nights sleep.

In the morning, we had breakfast and gave the girls some sugar, cooking oil, rice, a few sparkly pencils and a ceramic wall hanging (I bought in Raqchi.) saying goodbye, we boarded our boat and settled on for the forced march to continue.

Needless to say, we visited another island, were served lunch at a high price and rode 3 hours back to Puno. The best part was we met a couple from Holland and two guys from Sweden (they just graduated from Lund, Ross). We had a bunch of laughs about our fake tour and met up with all four for dinner that night back in Puno.

It was the couple from Holland that told us the possibility of heading to the real Uros Islands and confirmed he fact that we were in Fact hoodwinked. The next morning I said goodbye to Sarah and Mark, made the boat ride to see the real islands (very impressive) then caught a bus to Arequipa.