Puno

Another day on lake Titicaca. Today we took a tour to the tourist traps of the Uros floating islands. Now, dont get me wrong because they are incredibly cool, and if they can milk us gullable tourists for all we are worth, good for them. This place held a special interest for me because they use my plant for EVERYTHING. Literally. The build their houses out of it, build their boats out of it, live on floating islands composed entirely of it, eat it, feed it to their animals, sell it to gringos....
We took the boat out of Puno harbor. Puno is a totally different world than Copacabana. Much bigger and dirtier. The harbor is pretty darn gross, I know the sewers go strait to the lake, and there is some pretty nasty stuff in those sewers by the smell of it. Houses
Boats!

Cute old men working outside their houses
Feeding animals Gringo fodder (yes, I did too buy one! They were cool, its my plant!) We got to ride the cool boat More cool boats
This kid went with us on the totora boat, he was an absolute blast! We played tickle games and laughed so hard.
Then, he tried to make the boat go all by himself!
Here is Katie and I on our last day together, walking on a floating island of my plant! By the way, Katie was the absolute best. I have always loved my primita, but this trip gave me a wonderful chance to really get to know her, travel induced grossness and all (you know what I mean, if youve ever travelled!). She really earned a honerary biologist title, and kicked butt with keeping me from totally loosing my head when thing got rough. So, everybody know, my primita rocks!

Later today, we got to experience the Puno supermercado. It was a wild place. Little cubicles with everyting for sale. The meat was expecially interesting, just out there for all to see and smell! We met up with another Californian here in Puno, her name was Sarah and she is staying here for a 6 month internship of sorts. She helped me find a place to collect, and generally was a blast. Here was the beautiful site. Remember, this is 4810 meters above sea level!!!!! Look! They really do feed it to all of their animals! So, now comes the funny story. See, we finally got a chance to do laundry here, and I decided to wash my work clothes because they were rather vile. Didnt expect to be able to work till tomorrow. Then, Sarah had a small window of time available and I had to take it. Unfortunately, the only clothes I had that werent being washed were my long pants, and a miniskirt that Katie gave me. Yeah. So, I collected totora in a miniskirt. It was hilarious! I got an audience too. A couple of kids came over to investigate, and a group of adults sat on the bank and laughed at me as I slipped and fell and splashed duckweed up my skirt!