uneven stairs

Right now I am sitting in my friend Paisley's apartment in Cusco, and we've had a great day so far. Except I totally broke the shower here. I was turning the shower head and lost my balance, and ended up pulling the shower head half out of the wall. Whoops, PVC pipe come undone. Because of this I felt I owed paisley a clean house so that's what we did for the first part of our day. Before we found huge 7 sole lunch of a fresh salmon pan fried with potatoes and seasoned rice and salad made in front of us at the smaller market in town. Eyes still on. It was awesome actually. (7 sole is like $2.25 by the way.) Yes! But you guys don't even know what we've been up to the last few days!

Picking up where Leslie left off, we did trek across town, and our hopes and wishes for the new inn were granted and then some! Duque Inn really saved us. Ricardo, the inn keeper, had replied to our desperate email, assuring us that they would be waiting for us with brazos abiertos. open arms. which is just what we needed after a night of little to no sleep in the terrible bothy hostel. We walked up the uneven stairs (characteristic of a lot of places here) and found our room. The fourth floor room had panoramic views of Puno and the lake. Brass bands playing and cannons going off woke me from the nap that I had fallen into that afternoon. we had to get down there! down at the plaza, we joined the crowds to watch dancers in traditional festival wear. Obviously, that was awesome to see. Partly because the performers were between 16 and 25 years old, and so proud to show off their culture. I tried to think of anything back home comparable, and couldn't, really. Which seems a little sad.
Anyway, We finished that night off with a couple hours in a local bar with our first pisco sours and it just felt so right.

The next day, we took a tour of Lake Titicaca. For hundreds of years, people have been living on man made reed islands there, fishing from reed boats and living in reed houses. Which is just amazing really. People still do this. Super unfortunately, our tour was tragically exploitative and I just felt like I needed to apologize the whole time we were there. Ugh. We should have listened to lonely planet when they called it "reed Disneyland." The next stop was the island of Taquile, which was really beautiful. Hot sun, green trees, bright flowers, llamas, people in their brightly colored indigenous wear, cobblestone paths, all at such an elevation to literally take your breath away. We hiked up the side to see over the expanse of the lake into Bolivia. If the lake was any bigger we couldn't have seen it, it is just so giant. Big enough to birth the sun? Maybe.

Sorry for such a delay. We will be posting again soon. Love to everyone back home!

Emily