The bus ride sucked and we arrived in Puno on the shores of lake Titikaka at 3:00 am and got a hotel for the rest of the night. First thing in the morning we booked a tour to a pre-Inca ceremonial grave site about an hour taxi ride from Puno. We passed sever small town mostly make of mud brick and either tin or thatch roofs. I continue to be amazed at how populated the countryside is. It seems that there are mud huts and small towns every few miles. There are always locals walking along the road side; the women are dressed with dirty dresses and always have a blanket with a bundle of stuff or a baby on their backs; they also have almost without exception a bowler hat that is way to small.

When we arrived at the site it was not very exciting so since it was located on a small lake we decided to fish for a while. On our return trip one of the main towns we had passed through before was very alive with calibrations of their labor day. The main and only through street of the town was totally blocked bay a parade that stretched the entire length of the town. All the towns people and it looked like all the people from the surrounding communities had converged and were dressed in their Sunday best. We spent a short time with them before we decided to go. It took us about 30 minutes to get past the town that we drove through in less the 30 seconds before.

When we got back we had lunch the took a tour to the Uros, the famous floating islands of Lago Titikaka. I did not know what to expect, but I was very surprised by what I saw. These islands are made of reeds, lots of reeds. They are about 6 feet thick and range in size from the size of 1/2 a basketball court to the size of a football field! They are constantly adding reeds to the top to replenish the reeds that decay and fall to the bottom of the lake. There are over 1500 people living on the islands with some fairly large structures. There are several schools, and enough huts to support the entire population. We visited just of couple of the islands and took a boat made of reeds to go between them.

One of the islands we visited was primarily residences, but they had a large area set aside for a volleyball court, and they were pretty good! We were free to walk around anywhere on the islands and you could find thin spots if you looked. We stayed on the islands for only a few hours then hopped our boat back to Puno. We had dinner then hopped another crappy bus for Cusco.

Cusco is the backpacker hub of Peru and the base city for Machupicchu. Since we arrived early in the morning(4am) we booked a hotel and slept in a bit. We spent several hours finding and booking our tour to the ruins, then spent the rest of the day wondering around the city. We had to be up early for the 4 hour train ride to get to the town at the bottom of the canyon below Machupicchu. We wanted to trek into the ruins but there was a new regulation enacted 2 days before we arrived that prohibited more then 500 people from being on the trail at any one time, so the soonest booking we could find put us past our departure date. So we had a one day pass and got a train and bus ride to the ruins.

When we arrived the sun was out and it was an amazing site. I got separated from Guan and David due to us all wandering in different directions. You could pretty much go wherever you wanted. I walked up the Inca trail for about 30 minutes to get a better view of the whole area. The Inca Trail is a trail the is about 6 feet wide paved in rocks; where it was steep, very well made stairs were either carved in the bedrock or made with large similar rocks. In many places along the trail and around the ruins one miss step would resulted in a fall of several thousand feet.

I finally met up with Guan and Dave again about 3 hours later at the top of the mountain that is in all the pictures you have seen of the ruins. That was an amazingly steep trail; for the most part the clime was about a 60% grade. We spent some time up there enjoying the views and met several other Americans there (there are not many Americans in Peru, up to this point we had only ran into 3 others including the ambassador). I took about 70 photos in all of the ruins.

Just before we had to leave a short light rain came through and produced an intense rainbow that sprang off the top of the ruins and dropped deep into the canyon. It was a good ay to finish our time at the ruins. We got in late last night and had a quick dinner then I hit the hay. Today we slept in until 7:30 then had a quick breakfast and got on a mini-bus (mini-van with 15 cramped seats) and headed out into rural Peru. Our destination today was a river about 3 hours from Cusco. We went rafting on a class 3-4 river for the day.

The day went pretty smooth with only one moment of high adrenalin. If any of you have rafted before you know it is not a good sign when the guide yells "Rock side left, Rock side right, Rock side left....!!!) We were in the middle of a class 4 and got stuck in a spinning torrent of white water and nearly flipped the boat 4 or 5 times! We were stuck in it for about 45 seconds, but it seamed much longer. When we got to the bottom of that rapid set the guide apologized to me for that, and I replied "That was great! Are we gong to have any other opportunities to do that?" At the end of the day we all had a great time and the mini-bus ride back to Cusco was not too bad because of the incredible views along the way.

I still was just amazed by the amount of terracing of the mountains all through Peru. It seems that no hill or mountain is missed no matter how steep it is. We decided to eat cheap for dinner to night and found a street vender selling fresh skewers of meat with a potato on the end of each. Dinner set us back about a dollar. After that we wondered into an area that is very populated but totally void of tourists and had desert at an apparent local favorite. They were surprised to see us and excited at the same time. It was a good way to end a spectacular day.

Until next time...