Our first stop: Puno

Our first stop was south in the city of Puno, where the famous Lake Titicaca is. When we first arrived to the airport in Juliaca our first impression was that we had gotten on the wrong plane and landed in Afghanistan. The city is probably one of the ugliest city in the world (as said by the guy sitting next to me in the airplane). There's dust everywhere, all the houses look unfinished and they all have the same brownish color. It was about 45 min. to get to Puno. Puno was also not an enchanting city and it hit us how cold it was. The first thing we did when we got to our hotel The Qelqatani (which was OK) was drink Coca Tea and sit by the heater in the lobby. They use Coca in teas, candy, or you can chew it in your mouth to help with altitude sickness. Even coca wasn't enough to help us with our headache and Hunter even had to stay the next day in our trip to the lake because he had been vomitting all night. The 5 of us joined a boat tour to visit the floating islands of Uros. These islands are man made with floating reeds (or what they call Totora) that grows right there in the lake. The islands, the houses, the food, everything is made from Totora. The people that live in those islands (about 42 islands) are called Uros and as you can see they're skin is a differente color, kinda reddish because of the high altitudes the sun is stronger but also because the totora contains a lot of iodine. One funny episode, the president of the island we were visiting showed his humble house to Raul and asked if he wanted to take a picture of him in his house. Raul, being the guy that he is, responded that No! Si tu eres muy feo! (You're too ugly!) hahaha at the end he did end up taking his picture. We later took a ride in one of the totora boats while the women said bye to us singing songs like: Vamos a la playa, oh oh oh, and they finished by saying: Hasta la vista Babies! They tought the little girls to sing in spanish, english, and even japanese!