A few days ago I had just gone down from the impressive Matchu Pitchu, now I'am already in La Paz looking foreward to an adventure in the immense Uyuni desert in south Bolivia.
My night bus from Cusco to Puno (peruvian city on the shore of the lake titicaca), went fine. As usual you sleep half of the trip the other half you wonder if you still have all your stuff and if you have not missed your stop! I arrived in Puno right at sunrise! Alex, SM and Monica were all waiting for me in a nice hotel offering a nice view on the sun rising behind the moutains on the other side of the lake! I still manage to sleep a few hours before we went onto a journey to visit the indigenous floatting villages. At first the lake from Puno does not give a good impression. It looks very polluted and its greenish color given by envading algues does not correspond at all to the deep blue christal water the guidebook was talking about! However, the further we will go in our discovering of the lake the better impressed we will get. 
At first the indigenous village we could visit was impressive by the originality of their way of living. Since ages, those people, chassed by more dominating indigenous communities, have been living cut from the rest of the world on their artificial islands isolated on this lake, being the biggest lake in the world at this altitude (3800m). It is incredible how they were able to be almost completly autonomous living at first on small boats and later on their island made both of them enterely outof reeds. This natural plant found in abundance on this part of the lake forms the base of their life. Food, houses, boats and nowadays artesania for tourist are all made out of this plant. People were very friendly and we enjoyed visiting one island with all its owner family in traditional costumes (all this was obviously exagerated and prepared for tourist but it was still nice to see knowing that other communities don't accept tourism). We even went on another part of the village made of course of another island, on which there was a small hostal with reeds cabans for rooms. We managed, to see those indigenous real way of living, visiting an Evangelist church and their real new houses made of shining metal tiles and walls. This done, we quickly headed to the Bolivian boarder, in order to get there before dark since our experience of getting at boarder by night was not that great! We arrived after 3 hours of small minibus, 3o min of "bicytaxi" and a few talks with the police boarder (Alex got a long interrogation and a corrupted peruvian policeman tried to get some money out of my gringo friend which unfortunatly, as well as when we entered, did not let us a good idea of Peru's police and politcal system). Bref, we enterred, arrived safe and with everything in Copacabana, our first Bolivian city. Here again, like in Central America, people change radically just by crossing a boarder! No it is true! We were amazed to see how people were more friendly and open than in Peru! We were also happy because we realized that it was the cheapest place we had ever been to. 1.5$ for our hotel room with a great balcoony overlooking the lake! It's 1am and the internet here in La Paz is going to "finally" close, I'll continue telling about all this later on.
At first the indigenous village we could visit was impressive by the originality of their way of living. Since ages, those people, chassed by more dominating indigenous communities, have been living cut from the rest of the world on their artificial islands isolated on this lake, being the biggest lake in the world at this altitude (3800m). It is incredible how they were able to be almost completly autonomous living at first on small boats and later on their island made both of them enterely outof reeds. This natural plant found in abundance on this part of the lake forms the base of their life. Food, houses, boats and nowadays artesania for tourist are all made out of this plant. People were very friendly and we enjoyed visiting one island with all its owner family in traditional costumes (all this was obviously exagerated and prepared for tourist but it was still nice to see knowing that other communities don't accept tourism). We even went on another part of the village made of course of another island, on which there was a small hostal with reeds cabans for rooms. We managed, to see those indigenous real way of living, visiting an Evangelist church and their real new houses made of shining metal tiles and walls. This done, we quickly headed to the Bolivian boarder, in order to get there before dark since our experience of getting at boarder by night was not that great! We arrived after 3 hours of small minibus, 3o min of "bicytaxi" and a few talks with the police boarder (Alex got a long interrogation and a corrupted peruvian policeman tried to get some money out of my gringo friend which unfortunatly, as well as when we entered, did not let us a good idea of Peru's police and politcal system). Bref, we enterred, arrived safe and with everything in Copacabana, our first Bolivian city. Here again, like in Central America, people change radically just by crossing a boarder! No it is true! We were amazed to see how people were more friendly and open than in Peru! We were also happy because we realized that it was the cheapest place we had ever been to. 1.5$ for our hotel room with a great balcoony overlooking the lake! It's 1am and the internet here in La Paz is going to "finally" close, I'll continue telling about all this later on.
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