September 26, 2007
From SATA-Peru-2007
It was a cold morning, the sun peaked through the window as Hayley and I slowly crawled out of our beds and quickly put on every piece of clothing we brought to Amantani. Even though we set our alarm for 6:30 am our host mother knocked ever so softly on the door, beckoning us to breakfast. As we entered the small dark kitchen, we were greeted with huge smiles from our host father and served steaming hot cups of Muña, mint tea. After eating what seemed to be a tourist breakfast of thin Swedish like pancakes with fresa (strawberry) jam. Our host grandfather then took our over packed bag and strapped it to his back and assisted our ascend down to the dock, where our boat waited our arrival. It should be noted that our host grandfather had just climbed up from the dock to the house with about 50lbs of potatoes on his back just to be told to go back down the mountain, yes the trek has just been changed to a huge mountain. Then the 2 ½ hour boat ride back to Puno. Exhausted, most of us past out for the duration of the trip. Erich and I cut our nails off the back of the boat, it was thrilling.
We then visited Pre-Incan and Incan tombs. Following the tombs was the highly acclaimed boxed lunch consisting of a massive chicken leg, cheese sandwich, ham sandwich, orange, banana, chocolate, and cough drops. A meal fit for an Incan Ruler.
Back to the city of Pu-no? We arrived at the bus station and awaited our departure for Arequipa. Six hours, two movies, and a game of Bingo later, we arrived in Arequipa at 8pm only to discover that we had to wake up at 2:30am for a five-hour bus ride to Colca Canyon. Four Piscos later, none of us were complaining about the early wakeup.
