Carnival, Puno and Lake Titicaca

After eating way too much at the barbecue on Friday night and after having just a few hours sleep 10 of us met up at Terminal Terrestre at 3.30 am on Saturday morning to catch bus to Puno, right in the East of Peru. 6 hours later, after passing through the rain damaged town of Juliaca we arrived. We took taxis to our very nice (but freezing cold) hotel and after turning down the crazily expensive tour that the hotel lady tried to sell us we made our way down to the dock. We had to barter a good price for the boat to take us out to see the Islas Uros which are famous floating islands that are built on reed beds. It was really interesting. There are about 50 of these islands and originally the inhabitants would sustain themselves by trading fish for other goods on the land. Now, however, they are super touristy and everything seems to revolve around providing for the tourists. This meant that I ended up with slightly mixed feelings about the whole thing. On the one hand I was fascinated by the culture etc but on the other hand I felt really guilty about the exploitation of the local population. Nevertheless I´m really glad to have seen it.

On our return we all flocked back to the hotel to sleep for a couple of hours (after stopping off to buy some amazing hats) and then at 7pm we all met up again to go out to enjoy carnival. It was the Festival de la virgen del Candelaria and in Puno it is particularly well celebrated (which is why we decided to go this weekend!) We could hear the music as we walked down the street to the Plaza de Armas and when we arrived there it was amazing. There were loads of brass bands that led processions of different groups of girls, boys, women, men who were all dancing and shaking wooden instrument things. All the colours and the clothes that they were wearing were amazing. I can´t even describe how cool it was! After an hour or so of watching these processions we made our way to a restaurant which some of us decided was far too expensive so four of us then upped and left again for some authentic street food. We had alpaca kebabs and cake and candyfloss (I was worried about the state of my stomach but it was all okay!). We then basically stayed out for much of the night soaking up the atmosphere and attracting attention with our strange western dancing! Two of us also ended up being accosted and had to dance in this huge circle of drunken guys for longer than was truly comfortable. Although that wasn´t as bad as the extremely drunk man in the gorilla costume who enjoyed having his photo taken with Olly a little too much! The processions seemed to go on all night and when we went out the next morning there were still more groups. We spent the whole morning wondering around, it seemed that whatever street we went down there were always processions coming up it. It was amazing and so Peruvian!!!
Finally we got a bus home at 3pm. It hadn´t rained at all in Puno (although we were told that without a doubt it would), in fact it had been bright sunshine and 32C!! Three hours into the bus ride however and it was snowing hard, 30 minutes later we had crazily can´t-see-five-metres-in-front-of-you fog (that was scary!) and then the rain hit us! The first proper rain in Arequipa since I´ve been here! It was great. I arrived home super tired but super happy. I can honestly say it was my best weekend yet in Peru!
PS. I would have uploaded more videos but it takes too long!