Hello from Bolivia, the tenth country we have visited so far this year!

First, to fill you in on the end of our tour in Peru:

From Puno we took a very, very slow boat, first to the Uros reed islands. There are about 40 of these islands, each home to four to six families. The islands are basically manmade rafts made of reeds, anchored to the bottom of Lake Titicaca. Seems a bit of a hoo-hah tfor a place to live, but it´s facinating.

Then we putted along for another three hours to reach Amantani Island (playing scum on the way made the journey tolerable). On Amantani we were allotted our host families (2 to a family). Marisa and I stayed with Isobel and her family (husband, grandmother, 7 year old girl and two three year olds - boy and girl, possibly twins, possibly cousins. Their primary language is quechua, the language of the incas, but they spoke some spanish, and so do we after six weeks in Latin America, so we got along pretty well.

The house was a mud-brick two-storey place, and our room was upstairs. When I stood up straight my head touched the ceiling (more on height related problems later), and even Meze had to duck to get through the door. There was electricity, but only for light bulbs -- the cooking was all over fire.

After helping Isobel with lunch (peeling potatoes for our potato and quinoa -- a bit like cous cous -- soup), we met up with the others from our tour and played soccer. Lake Titicaca is already at 3000+ metres above sea level, and the township on the island was a fair hike up the hill, so running around wasn´t the easiest... but it was a lot easier than on the Lares Trek (some heavy duty antibiotics dealt to my tummy bug swiftly).

We played for about an hour, then an GAP tour group emerged from the hills and challenged us Tucan-ers, so a selection of us played for another hour... Everyone agreed afterwards that Marisa was the star in goal.

We then walked up to the highest point on the island to watch the sunset. Unfortunately a big mass of cloud to the West obscured the spectacle, but it was still a great view and there was a relic up the top which we walked around three times for good luck. Hopefully it works!

We then descended and went to our respective home families for dinner (another soup, rice with potatoes, pasta and carrot -- carb overload!).

After dinner Isobel dressed us two in typical Amantani dress: a poncho and beanie for me, two brightly coloured skirts, embroidered white blouse, stripey cumerbund, and black shawl for Meze. We then headed back up to the main township for a "fiesta". Everyone from the two tour groups on the island was similarly dressed with their host mothers in tow. There was a local band that played for about an hour and a half (pan pipes, little lutey-guitary things, drums, flutey-recordery things -- perhaps I should have asked the names of the instruments?), and we all danced. I´m not sure how authentic the dancing was -- it was a bit like folk dancing back in primary school, a bit like a drunken irish wedding -- but it was very fun and extremely exhausting as each dance lasted 15 minutes, we were at altitude and it was hot under all those layers of local dress!

But like I said, great fun, and one of the highlights of our tour.

Oh, I forgot that before dinner we got to play with the kids for a while. They were obviously used to strangers coming into their home -- they came straight up to us and said 'hola' (even at 3 they´re learning their second language, Spanish), and wanted to be thrown in the air. They were so cute, and later at dinner they were very well behaved.

The next day our host families made us breakfast (light pancakes, very much like Italian omlette) and we made our way down to the port, said our farewells to our host mothers and set off for another island, Taquile, an hour away. Unlike the millpond the day before, Lake Titicaca was choppy that morning and a few of us found the trip uncomfortable, though we were assured that the lake always calmed down in the afternoon (a good thing as we were 3 hours from Puno).

Taquile, despite it´s proximity to Amantani, had it´s own peculiar customs, which Manuel, our guide, explained to us. The most notable is that all the men knit. When a boy wants to marry a girl, he goes to the girl´s father and asks his permission. The father takes the boy´s beanie and pours a jug of water into it. If it leaks too much, he tells the boy to come back when he is a better knitter!

As advertised, Titicaca was back to a millpond in the afternoon, so it was a much more pleasant journey back to the mainland (thank goodness).

The next day the six of us in our tour who were heading to La Paz boarded a bus to the Bolivian border. The boarder crossing was uneventful, but did remind us that from know on, we´d be doing all this without the help of a Spanish speaking guide. From the boarder it was only 15mins to Copacabana -- no, not the Brazillian beach -- but a nice town on the shores of Titicaca. We had an hour for lunch before our next bus left, and experienced the joys of a country even cheaper than Peru (like, twice as cheap). Go Bolivia.

From Copacabana it was another 3 hours by bus (including an intermission while we and our bus were ferried across a narrow straight in the lake on separate vessels) to La Paz. The previous evening our trusty camera that has been with us all the way through this 2 Year World tour started playing up. The lens would extend halfway, then no further, and a message instucting the user to turn the camera off and then on again appeared on the screen. Unfortunately the old IT fallback didn´t work, so we could take photos of the Bolivian side of the lake (in our opinion, more stunning than the Peruvian side), nor the dramatic descent into La Paz.

Today we took the camera to get fixed. Finding camera stores and photo developers was no problem, finding ones that did repairs was slightly harder, finding ones open after midday (it´s Saturday) was more of a problem. In the end we found one place that eagerly took our camera into the back room while we waited... only for the guy to reappear apolgetically half an hour later. So it was off to another suburb, the electronics hub of La Paz, where we found a guy who´ll fix our lens for 310 bolivianos (about 85 NZ dollars), but only by Monday afternoon. We had planned to stay three nights in La Paz to recharge and organise ourselves, but I think we´ll stay an extra day to ensure we have a function camera for the Uyuni salt flats, which look stunning.

So the upshot of all that is it may be awhile before photos of Amantani are uploaded, and photos of La Paz may be mini

It´s not such a bad thing to be stuck in La Paz. As I mentioned, it´s quite a stunning city to descend into, and we´ll probably check out the Valley of the Moon tomorrow. There are stalls on almost every street selling everything from locks (fortunate as I left one of the ones I use of my main pack in the hotel in Puno), hole punches, prickly pears and tissues. Then there´s the witches market, where you can buy all manner of charms to appease mother earth (she likes sweet things) or the spirit of the mountains (particularly fond of alpaca foetuses), and talismen to bring love, fame or a new car into your life.

There are also several shoe stores, which I was pleased about as my shoes -- like my camera they´ve been with me this whole journey -- are falling apart. Unfortunately, shoes only go up to 44 european size here, as the population is on the short side. My shoes are 44.5, and nothing in this town fits me!!! The same thing happened in Puno. I´ve never felt particularly tall, but after the ceiling in Amantani and this drama with the shoes, I feel like a giant!

Brazillians seem taller, so maybe I´ll find something there.

UPDATE

It´s Monday and I´ve just posted a new photo album, which means Snr. Nelson fixed our camera!! What a legend! I managed to take a few snaps of La Paz as it´s our final afternoon here.... hopefully tomorrow on the bus to Oruru (to catch the train to Uyuni) I can get photos of the whole city from the rim of the valley.

Oh, and I managed to find some shoes that fit me yesterday. They´re bright blue and from Brazil (check out the last photo in the album). One of the stranger souvenirs I´ve purchased, but comfy as.