So about our jail experience… well to make a long, agonizing story short, we actually never got in San Pedro jail. We heard of lots of people who did and the great stories that went along with it. We did find a bio on our potential inmate guide though. It is amazingly interesting and I highly recommend you Google it and read some stories
After our disappointing last day in La Paz, we headed over to Lake Titicaca where we found you could hike along the shore for a few hours and then get a boat to this island Isla De Sol (Island of the Sun). We got up early for the hike after a very light breakfast. I decided I wanted to go up into the mountains more so I left Ryan and Kevin and ventured off.
Now, hiking on a nearly empty stomach for 5 hours is hard enough but when at altitudes higher than 4000 meters like everywhere around these Bolivian highlands it is insane! So I hiked until I was almost falling over but I wasn’t at the end of the peninsula yet where I was planning on meeting the other two and heading to the island. I stumbled down into a small little village in the mountains and started banging on doors to see if anyone had any food.
Finally I got to one door that looked like a little shop. Some local guy opened the door and I think I scared him partly from my lack of sustenance and partly from my lack of hygiene. I looked around the shop half falling over from hunger. Good, they had water… but all they had to eat was baking chocolate. So I grabbed a few blocks of chocolate and a 2 liter water and left the shop. I collapsed outside and downed the whole 2 liters in one sitting and started gnawing on the baking chocolate.
By this time I think the shopkeeper was really freaked out. He ran to his nearby house and got his wife to cook some quick food. I am not sure if this was advantageous because he brought me a plate full of potatoes dipped in grease (charred on the outside and raw on the inside). I ate everything super fast cause I was starving (even though it was disgusting). After this the shopkeeper had this great big proud smile like he revived me to life or something. He quickly snapped out of it and said “5 bolivianos please”, holding out his hand. I handed him the money despite the food (which made me sick later that night by the way). Just to make sure he didn’t win completely, I went back to the shop and bought some more chunks of baker’s chocolate, saying that I was still starving.
So finally I met up with Ryan and Kevin and we payed a guy to row us to the island. After a few strokes, he pointed to the paddles and told us to start rowing (then he slacked off). Now, Isla De Sol is supposed to be the creation site of the sun and the first Inca people. It definitely was sunny, that's for sure. It may have been pure coincidence or maybe just ironic, but by the end of the day both Koop and I were severly burnt on our arms and face. We hiked all over the island and stayed in a cheap little place with little sheep running everywhere. Kevin had lots of fun trying to mount the various island animals.
Anyway, we just arrived in Peru and the city of Puno. Puno is nothing special and is on the Peru side of Lake Titicaca. Fortunately when we arrived in the city, there was a huge fiesta going on. They wouldn’t, of course, block off the street so as we were coming into the city, we were weaving through dancers in a parade.
Just outside of Puno there is a city with a fertility temple. Before it got dark we went to the temple and posed with the 82 oddly shaped phallic rocks (I won’t go into details). Kids outside the temple tried to sell us little rock miniatures. We thought they wouldn’t go over so well on a shelf at home. Later tonight we booked a tour back out into Lake Titicaca where we will visit some islands and stay with some local families!
-steve
