The next morning we both felt pretty good, I was so much better than the day before while riding – as evident in the videos, I was not well riding over the Andes the previous day😉. We went for breakfast at 8:00am and it was a very good spread of bread, cakes, eggs, and pancakes (we had pancakes for the first time on our trip). They also offered a plastic bag to take things away for lunch – we packed triangle bread rolls with avocado and tomatoes and two pieces of cake each for lunch. We worked on our blog until shortly before our pick-up time for the 3 hour tour to the floating islands of the Uros people. I talked to my sister on WhatsApp and we were picked up from the hotel lobby at 11:55am in a small Toyota and he then picked up another couple from Chicago, USA and we were driven to the port where we were greeted by our tour guide “Rolly” who escorted us to the boat. One other couple was already on the boat (from Wales) and another young couple from Australia joined us. We were only 8 people in total in an enclosed boat and we drove out to the islands through channels in the thick reeds while Rolly explained about the wildlife on the lake first including some giant frog discovered by Jaque Cousteau and the various birds. He then explained about the Uros people who had settled around the lake before the Incas arrived. They then fled on boats made out of reeds onto the lake to avoid being taken over by the Incas and later the Spanish. They then worked out how to build floating islands out of the reeds for more space to raise their families. We were then allowed to go to the top deck of the boat as we were approaching the islands and take pictures. There are over 135 islands and each island takes about 1.5 years to build and lasts a maximum of 40 years. We arrived at the first island we were allowed to visit and disembarked off the boat – walking on the reeds felt very squashy and soft and some areas only had a thin dry layer of reeds before it was wet underneath. We sat around an area where the woman president of that island explained with a display how they build and anchor the floating islands. We were then assigned in pairs to one of the ladies and were allowed to enter their hut – it was made of reads and the wind was howling through – there was one large bed and colourful clothes were hanging around the entire hut – no wardrobes, no desk, no electricity apart from small solar panels that power light for the night, no heaters!, and up to 8 years ago there had also been no toilets or showers on these islands😳!!. The women make handcrafted table runners, pillow cases and other items and we were strongly encouraged to buy something. We bought a small pillow case which we plan to use for the house in Malua Bay. We then sat around the area again and the ladies and one of the young boys sang three songs in three languages – Quechuan, Spanish and English. We then paid to be driven on one of their boats (Totora) made from reeds and 300 plastic bottles to keep them afloat (not sure how they made them float before plastic bottles 😂 but then again they did not transport overweight tourists around in them then either😂). We were driven to another island where there was a shop and “restaurant” – after we had seen how they dry the fish in the sun and on the roofs of their huts and knowing how polluted the lake is with heavy metals, we did not feel like eating anything at the restaurant – although that island must have had more electricity and a freezer as the small children were running around with icy poles😉👍 There was more handcrafted items being sold and we waited until our boat arrived while very dark clouds moved over and thunder was heard loudly with the approaching afternoon storm. We were back on the boat before it started sprinkling and we were driven back to shore. From there we had the option to walk back to the hotel or be driven back – we opted to be driven back to the hotel. We then walked to an iPeru tourist office near the main square to get more detailed info on the roads to Cusco as we had been told at the hotel that there had been road closures. They carefully checked everything and said that the road would be open and gave us maps of the area including Cusco but they did not know about roads from Cusco to the coast and suggested to check once in Cusco. We then continued to the main plaza to take pictures in daylight and then wanted to check out the basilica cathedral but they charged an entry fee and it was all dark inside – so I took some pictures of the photographs of the inside of the church without going inside 😉👍 We had met up with the couple of Wales from the tour at the plaza. We then went back to our room for a rest and ate our lunch provisions as our dinner booking, which we had made the previous night at the nice restaurant, was not until 8:00pm. We had another nice dinner and I drank the green coca hot drink again as it is meant to help with altitude sickness. 😉 Good excuse to have coco and I then did some research on the various forms of coco leave chewing or hot teas and whether it could be detected in drug screens and for how long after consuming it – let’s just say I stopped drinking, chewing or otherwise consuming any coco products after that search 😂👍 since there is also no scientific evidence that it actually helps to reduce symptoms of altitude sickness 😉👍.

We had an early night after dinner as we had a long day of riding 252km ahead of us to Sicuani which meant to take over 4 hours and potentially included riding over 4000m altitude again.