Lake Titicaca Peru

 

Don't be fooled. I am still without my handy digital (replaced that on the black market in La Paz), But I did bring my massive EOS 1 and finally found some film. *Note to self; don't get film developed in Bolivia. Icky colours eh? *Note to you; when on Lake Titicaca do a home stay. To this day it remains the most bizarre day of my life.

Alana's Checklist for planning The Most Bizarre Day of Your Life

• Board a boat on the highest Navigable Lake in the world: check 
• Dock at an inhabited floating island made of reeds: check
• Mail a postcard home from the post office on the island: check
• Board a double decker boat also made entirely of reeds: check
• Go for a tour than re-board non reed boat and head to a solid island for homestay: check
• Have new Peru mom greet you right off the boat and learn that she only speaks Quechua, which you foolishly forgot to brush up on: check
• Shown to new home and new bedroom locked with a rusty padlock: check
• Sit in aforementioned room for 2 hours wondering what you are supposed to be doing: check
• Finally retrieved for dinner which is had in a shack with dirt for the floor: check
• Eat possibly the worst meal of your life and have no idea what it is and no idea how to ask (stupid useless spanish phrase book): check
• Realize it may have been a sibling of the guinea pigs you just noticed running around your feet: check
• Watch mom breast feed a toddler while you try to choke down what appears to be a rubber egg: check
• Brought back up to room to wait for another bewildering hour: check
• Mom finally comes up with her arms full of traditional clothing you will be wearing at a party thrown in your honor: check
• Have to have mom tuck some of your parts into the 2 blouses and 3 skirts and a scarfy thing: check
• Pinkie swear with your roomies never to make public any photos taken of this night: check
• Dance like a mad person and drink like a sailor in a large room that smells like pee: check
• Actually don one of those geeky head-lamps so you will have your hands free to deal with your 3 skirts while you try to keep your balance squatting over a hole in an outhouse wondering if there isn't something to be said for peeing in the corner of the dance hall: check 
• Hear about all the amazing food the other moms made for their quests: check
• Watch your mom out party and out dance all the other moms: check
• Think about trying to convey to your mom that her cooking may improve if she spent more time in the kitchen and less time on the dance floor: check
• Quickly realize that she is pretty damn cool just the way she is, shitty cooking and all: check
• Taken back home long after everyone else's mom took them home, a little drunk from much beer: check
• Watch as mom pulls out plastic bowls from under the beds: check
• Then watch her hike up her skirts and squat over the bowl: check
• Take a minute to realize that she is telling you that this is where you pee at night: check
• Watch in horror as she locks the gate leading out to the outhouse: check
• Immediately regret that 'I guess one more can't hurt' beer: check
• Crawl onto thin hay mattress for what is sure to be an agonizing sleepless night: check
• Get woken up by roommates who are going to attempt a bathroom break out: check
• In an attempt to be stealthy crash into everything you can and wonder 'where the hell did that empty bag of chips with the bells and tin cans around it come from?': check
• Contemplate climbing over wall that has shards of glass glued to the top because the deep gashes seem like a more pleasant experience than pissing in a bowl in front of practical strangers: check
• Grateful (and a little worried) for the lock picking skills of new best friend (who you will be watching closely for the duration of your time together, shady bugger): check
• Have the best damn pee of your life: check
• Try to stealth it back in but manage to find the jar of marbles on a wobbly table: check
• Sleep rather soundly the rest of the night: check
• Awake to the stories of 2 other breakouts in the night: check
• Head down to surprisingly edible breakfast: check
• Say goodbye to mom: check
• Never once see man of the house: check
• Board boat and watch a truly great place fade in the distance: sadly check

Inca Trail, and Machu Pichu

Unfortunately most of my shots from the trail were liberated from me as were the Nazca Lines shots. It is this amazing ability of mine to get a camera stolen every time I go away (even sometimes when I don't go away). I try to burn them on to cd's as often as possible but sometimes it just isn't an options. At least I have my head movies to remember them by.

Sand and Sun in Peru, oh and Nazca lines

If you have stumbled across my blog by accident and miraculously have gotten this far I'm certain that you would be shocked, confused, (maybe a little bored) to know that I HATE FLYING!

There are very few things that send me into panic attack mode like flying does. That is why it is completely tragic that I lost all the pictures I took while flying in what I see as a very tiny and poorly made coffin, over the Nazca Lines.

These pictures are all that remain of the place where the desert meets the ocean and where, some clearly interesting people decided to draw shapes in the sand only visible from the air, for purposes we don't know. My vote is that they just wanted to fuck with our heads.

Oh and I threw in a picture of me sandboarding.

Vegetarians, You Have Been Warned

Cusco Peru Inti Raymi