The Adoption

Itinery for the following 2 days consisted of making our way through to the Peruvian border to a small town on the lake called Puno. The bus ride was about 3.5 hours and once again I got the 4 way inspection of the passport by border control as I am South African. Once we exited the bus we were approached by a tour salesman named Oscar who scaringly manged to close the deal quite easily. The package included hotel accomodation for one night, hotel pickup, boat transfers to the 3 islands on the Lake and all meals included. After an early start the next day our ferry left the Port of Puno and made its way to the first island of Uros. Uros was an island made completely of reeds and inhabited by a few hundred people. Our guide Bruno gave us an introduction on the boat before making our stop. We were welcomed by the locals who gave us a short introduction of the island and then we preeeded to take photos , buy goods etc. On our departure we were serenaded with local songs as well as the phrase Asta La Vist Babe.... making it a little commercial.


The next island 3 hours away was called Amantani and this was where all our fun was too begin. On our arrival we were allocated to a local family of whom we were to stay that night with. You can get an idea of what the accomodation was like from the video below. Meals were extremely fun as we sat in the small hut in the right of the video. Converstaion was pretty stale as Mike and myself were terrible with the local language, Spanish, and we were expecting a bit much from a family who inhabited an island for 70 years of their life to know any English. Most of the time around the dinner table was spent looking up single words in the dictionary to try make basic conversation. Mikes phrase books which consisted of ´´ Can you call me a cab´´ and ¨please can I have the bill¨ were obviously not going to cut it....see video. Repitition of the words Gracia´s and Ahhhh Mooi Bien came from our corner most of the night.