El turisto

Peru has been a little bit of a change for me and jim as we are doing more of the tourist thing. This has included going to the two big attractions in peru: Lake titicaca and machu piccu. while machu piccu cost a pretty penny everything else has been suprisingly cheap. Ive been living off street venders who sell awesome food like this Choclo (corn) pictured below. It is basicly a corn on the cob with huge kernals but is not sweet. it comes with a hunk of cheese too. other delightful items include fresh bread and shish kabob things that have a big potato on the end and some sort of meat below it. the meat may or may not be guinea pig which is a popular food item here. the most any of this cost is about 50 cents.

Lake titcaca is located about at 12,500 feet in the middle of the andes. Jim and I decided to take a boat tour of it that took us to a couple of islands. the tour was only 13 dollars and consisted mostly of boat time going to and from the islands. The first island we visited was the uros floating read village which is exactly what it sounds like. the people take the reeds from near the shore and build a huge island out of them. we got a cool 15 minute talk about the island and then were attacked by the villagers trying to sell us hand crafts. I decided to try a bite of the bottom of the reed that the islanders eat and call the titicaca banana. It didnt taste very good. After the floating village we visited a real island and had lunch there which was nice. The downside to doing the whole tourist thing is that everyone you meet is trying to sell you something so it is hard to really talk to any local person you meet.

After lake titcaca we took a bus to cusco which is the ancient capital of the incas as well as one of peru´s main cities today. Cusco is also the launching point for several inca related adventures including machu piccu. we decided to sign up for a tour of maccu pichu which was a good idea. the place is kind of a zoo and you can only get there by train. the tour we bought ended up being way cheaper than the only train tickets we found independantly. however this was because instead of just jumping on the train in cusco we were ushered through a series of guides, buses, and trains which we could have never figured out independantly. the guide service was quite an experience in its self. starting with being picked up at our hotel it was a constant stream of people meeting us and delivering us to our next guide/transport. when we had no idea what was going on a guy would always show up yelling our names and tell us what to do. Once at machu piccu we got a tour of the place from our man willy who when learning we came from chicago replied "whats up my homies." Maccu piccu was pretty cool mainly for the fact of its location. it is in the middle of absolutley no where on the top of a mountain with 1000 ft plus drops on every side.

Willy would periodicly stop the tour and tell us to "take picture now" and even tell us to pose. this is me pretending to touch the top of wyma piccu which is the mountan next to machu piccu and is in every photo ever taken of the place.