We left Arequipa and headed towards Puno near Lake Titicaca. We paid 30 soles (6 pound) a ticket from Arequipa town but on arriving at the bus terminal we realised the tickets were only 15 soles (3 pound) gggrrrrrrr! Having fair hair and white skin means we are an easy target for scamming extra money out of us vulnerable gringos! The bus terminal was a like a cattle market with staff screaming prices at passing Peruvian customers desperate for the next sale! Then there was Lisa and Ben sat in the middle of all this completely bewildered!
We were obviously a little disgruntled about the accessive commission we were charged and spent 5 minutes whinging and moaning but then realised it was only 6 pound! We think the staff felt sorry for us (and had a little laugh at our expense) as they bumped us up to first class, so not all bad!! The bus leaves half an hour late as expected in Peru and as we are driving off, obviously with the door still open, the latecomers are desperately throwing their bags aboard and clinging for dear life, all in a days work in Peru!
We had heard a lot of negative things about Puno and were expecting to move on pretty quickly but we actually quite liked it. Puno is small and quite touristy but has a nice local community, lots of random band processions in the streets (we had no idea what they were for)!
We woke up nice and early to get ready for our tour to The Uros Floating Islands and Taquille Island and were ready and waiting at 6.50am for our minibus! We were stil waiting for our mini bus at 7.30am and started to think something may have gone wrong since the boat was meant to leave at 7am! Eventually at 8am a taxi came for us and yes they had forgotten about us so we missed the Uros Island and went straight to Taquille Island! Lisa was not a happy bunny as she mainly wanted to see the Uros Islands so we managed to get ourselves a free trip to the Uros Islands the following afternoon! We met some lovely English people on the boat to Taquille who entertained us for the 2 hour boat ride and ended up being the only positive thing about this trip! There really is not much to say about Taquille Island, very expensive, bit boring and a tourist trap- avoid if you are considering going!
The next day was the England game versus Kazakhstan Ben wanted to watch the game so we wandered in to town looking for a "Sports Bar" playing an England football game! We are in a small Peruvian town, Lisa doubted they would be playing the game, but Ben was adamant we would find it! An unsuccessful hour later we are sat in an internet cafe watching the England game online, well kind of watching it as it was mainly "buffering" rather than playing! In the afternoon we went to The Uros Islands and we were very glad we made them give us a free trip as it was an amazing place, quite surreal at times that these people still live like this! We had a ride on a Reed Boat and had a look in some of the houses on the floating islands! The floating island are on Lake Titicaca and are made out of reeds which are about 10 metres thick, the people who live on the islands top up the reeds every few months so that their island doesnt sink! Each island has a president and it appears that the people survive off the tourism, they seem pretty cosy on the island and do have a bit of electricity but the conditions are not great and therefore only have a life expectancy of 60! On the way back to Puno we got chatting to a German girl who told us the English cliche is that we have "terrible food", Ben spent the next hour defending English culinary!!