Friday 1 January 2010
Highlights: Floating islands of Lake Titicaca, Food Poisoning

Andrew and myself showed no ill effects from the big party last night and after a big breakfast made by our ‘mother’ we went down to the boat and said goodbye to the community that gave us so much fun last night.

Back on Lake Titicaca we headed off to the floating islands but first Titch decided to sober up by jumping into the freezing water, it did seem to work very fast. The floating islands were established over 500 years ago when the locals wanted to get away from the invading Incas.

Now there are about 60 such islands with about 1,000 people living on them. More people are returning to this lifestyle each year as tourism means families can live here again. Each island last about 20 years and new ones take about 8 months to build. Obviously they have to be very carefully with fires or their islands would go in smoke.

Back in Puno I started to feel very sick in the late afternoon. So much so that I missed Titch’s farewell, but my night was to be much harder than the partying that the group got up to. I believe shots were taken from on top of bars and the dancing was something to see and maybe laugh at 🙂