OK we're not in Puno, but this app won't recognise Lake Titicaca or any of the islands on it.

So we'd booked ourselves on the bog standard two day tour on Lake Titicaca, at 3,812m the world's highest navigable lake (whatever that means). The warning bells should have rung the night before in the tourist-ridden Puno, but hey.

First stop was the infamous floating islands of Uros. In years gone by some of the quick witted locals left the mainland to escape the invading Spanish and began to live on man made floating islands of reeds. Nowadays the only reason they still live on these islands seems to be to squeeze money out of the hundreds of tourists who visit them each day. It was all very contrived, each boat load of 20 or so tourists visiting a separate island (there are around 65 these days) where the 'locals' explain a bit of the history, show how the islands are made, put on a cringeworthy demonstration of market bartering and try to sell you tat. No tat was bought, but despite our cynicism it was actually quite informative and made for some decent photos.

Next stop was the island of Amantani - a real island no less. On the 2 day tour the night is spent with a local family - basically the island's population have come together to offer this experience and earn a few bucks at the same time. Can't blame them. So, on arrival you are allocated to a family in groups of 2 up. Fabrice and I were allocated to the lovely Rosalía Calsín Calsín, her husband Isaac, daughter Lennie and son Edison. As you can imagine, I was pretty apprehensive about the whole thing, but despite the fact that the (non-flushing) toilet was in a tiny brick house in the garden, our room was decent enough and even had electricity! No running water, but there you go. The family were lovely, really welcoming and Eddy in particular very entertaining - a typical 4 year old.

First up was lunch with the family - obviously an awkward affair with a stilted conversation between Fabrice and the adults. As I don't speak Spanish I just nodded and smiled at appropriate points and squirmed during the silent bits.

We were then taken to rejoin all the other tourists (around 50 I'd say) and we climbed the Pacha Tata (Earth Father) hill in the middle of the island to see the remains of the temple and take in the views as the sun set. Again, and I know I say this a lot, beautiful.

Not ones to miss a trick, the (presumably) non-hosting families send out their kids to try and sell more tat. There was a couple of (tone deaf) boys abusing a drum and a set of panpipes, and as there was a not inconsiderable French flavour to the groups, they hilariously insisted on murdering Frère Jacques over and over again. I'm not sure this was as appreciated as they had hoped!

Sun duly set, we headed back to our new families for another awkward meal. To be fair, the food was reasonable enough.

After dinner came the showpiece event, a "fiesta" in the local village shack, sorry, hall. Actually it was brick and had electricity but that's not as funny. However what followed was. I think the awkward meals were training for the cringeworthy fiesta. Basically the tone deaf kids from earlier seem to have equally tone deaf older siblings who are forced to play traditional instruments and 'sing' traditional songs whilst us foolhardy tourists and our newly adopted parents shuffle awkwardly around the floor a couple of times. Comedy genius. Oh, I forgot to mention that everyone dons traditional attire, us included. Actually, I quite liked the poncho, quite dapper!

We bought our 'parents' a Coke (for her) and a beer (for him), which they duly mixed together and shared. Tsk.

This fiasco lasted an hour or so before everyone departed for bed.

The next morning, after delicious pancakes and a less awkward goodbye (after all we'd bonded at the fiesta) we headed off to the neighbouring island of Taquille. Actually, the pancakes provided much amusement as little Eddy refused to eat his regular breakfast, insisting on pancakes as only a 4 year old can. He's a handful!

On Taquille we learned a bit more about the lake and the history of the locals, had a very tasty trout lunch and boarded the boat back to the mainland. Except the boat had other ideas and conked out. No panic, we just had to wait an hour for a back up, whilst some of us burned in the hot sun and the Norwegian among us swam in the freezing waters.

Back in Puno we decided to go local for our final night in Peru. So we ate at a local burger joint (shockingly expensive but very tasty) and went to the cinema to watch Taken 2. It was ****, but the only other English language option was a dodgy paranormal horror we'd never heard of.