Pushing the edge of Peru

I am staying by the shores of lake Titicaca.  We arrived last night on the bus.  Our host showed a sadly typical tendency to not actually hold the sign with our name on it, but we found each other, drove an hour out of town, and tucked ourselves in to comforting soup and an extremely awesome little casa. 

They gave us two rooms with an adjoining little living area. External bathroom and no shower are the amenity challenges, but this beautiful well appointed little flat with the lake streaming in your views from both sides charms your pants off.  We're staying 4 nights so we unpacked. 

We are on a peninsula, so you can see the lake from both sides, and the bucolic farmlands and the locals totally wear traditional garb for non tourism purposes and there's livestock and crops.  You can see quinoa ripening and potatoes blooming and baby donkeys and sheep tied up to graze.

Today we walked around some with a local guide and then swam in the lake.  My heavens it was cold.  Like hurts your feet when you step in cold.  But Jes encouraged me and we inched past the point of no return and dove in.  And of course once I'm in I never want to leave.  It was our guide's idea to swim but then he had to be cajoled and shivered like crazy.  The water is really blue. 

You can see Bolivia from here and its snow capped peaks.  We climbed a rock for a better view.  Tomorrow we might go see islands. There's definite plans for a campfire on an island Sunday.

We bussed here from Arequipa, where we were seeing Colca Canyon.  We walked down it and crossed the river and back up it.  And we totally made it and did a great job.  But there were downsides.  It was a lot burnier and dustier than the Machu Picchu trek.  More desert so  less loveliness.  And we were too slow on our last day hiking so our guide left us in the canyon and drove away with the rest of the group.  Hate. 

In good news at the bottom of the canyon we stayed someplace with a pool, so it's this beautiful body of water with fountains flowing into it surrounded by canyon walls. 

We crossed the world's dodgiest bridge to ford the river. I'm serious twigs held together with vines, real bridge washed out in last mudslide. 

On the last day Jes came back for me. She was worried because she knew I was out of water but she was ahead of me so get this that means she had finished climbing this somewhat grueling 5 hour hike and then walked down some of the hill which meant she would have to go back up again.  I was seriously touched.  We got in to town together and home on a 6 hour local bus cause ya know our tour left us so luckily we had the world's best hotel which we rebooked on the way back.

Last day in Arequipa we had a massage in the Roman baths at this hotel (I said awesome right) and enjoyed the steam room and then went and tore my tour company a new one til it was time to go scoring a partial refund.  Then a 6 hour bus to Puno and that's where I came in. 

It's been an intense few days.  I think I even skipped over

We took a plane over the Nazca lines seeing a whole bunch they are cool and planes rule.

I got kind of sick in here somewhere, queasy for like more than a day after the plane and coughing up increasingly uglier stuff on the hike.  Don't worry. I have Tussin.  It gets right to the bone. 

And we're downshifting now a bit. Dinner in an hour and we're curled up with books.