Exploring Peru

My uncle and I started our vacation by going to Machu Picchu. When I had gone with Steve, we had too much time, but when I went with my uncle, we had too little. We arrived at 2:30pm and the park closed at 5:30. We hung out in the main town that's a busride away from the ruins until our train around 9pm. We got back late Sunday night and Monday night we were off for Lake Titicaca, the 2nd largest lake in South America. Our bus ride lasted until 5:30am where we hung out in the bus terminal until 7:30. I got to take a picture of the sun rising. Later, we met up with our tour group and started our journey. The first stop was a man-made island. People used roots from reeds because they float, and then they piled reeds one way, then perpendicular the other way, and again and again until the island became high enough to live on. That's when I found out that only 30% of the people living on these islands actually want tourists. How is the government not protecting these people if majority vote says no tourists? So, I wasn't into being there as much after I heard that.
Their boats are made of reeds too and we got a little ride from one island to the next. The wierd thing about the islands is that your feet sink down a bit everytime you take a step, but you're feet don't get wet. It took a bit of getting used to. We explored a bit more and then headed to a God-made island where we stayed the night with some locals. We really only conversed with them when we first got there. We had dinner and breakfast with them, but we sat at a table with a couple of other people that were spending the night, and the family sat on little benches on the other side of the kitchen. The family was cute. Very happy people. Always smiling and laughing. The next day, we went to a different island and were able to see a festival going on with people dressing up and dancing around the plaza. We headed home after a bit less eventful things and arrived at the house around 3am I think. The pictures are of Uncle Dan's side of the room that we stayed in and also one of the arches that signified the entrance of a different town on the last island we visited. Then a picture of me hanging out on the boat with the only spanish speaker in our group, playing with the tour guide's son.


We took a couple days to relax in Cusco and then headed to Puerto Maldonado, a jungle just a 50 minute plane ride away from my house. We again were with a tour. We did a lot of riding in the boat, looking for animals. We saw capybaras (sp?), which are the largest rodents in the world, coming from the guinea pig family. We also saw caimans (a type of aligator), birds, turtles, and a snake. That night we went on a short walk through the jungle to look for bugs and animals of the night. We saw a lot of big spiders, somes lizards, and moths. The next morning we woke up at 4:15 am and took a boat ride to a clay lick. Every morning, parrots, macaws, and parakeets go to clay licks to eat the clay. The clay cleans our their system because in the winter (now) they eat fruit that isn't ripe and they have a lot of poisons for the birds. The clay takes the poisons out. It was beautiful seeing all these colorful birds and hearing them all make so much noise. We sat there for a couple hours in silence just appreciating it all. (more to come but, as I said in my last post, I need to be planning for school)