Island Tour: day 1 continuation - Amantani

Following the visit to Uros, we've arrived at Amantani, a large natural island inhabited by the the Quechua indians. Once we stepped on a solid groud we were greeted by a number of locals, who were to be our host families for the rest of the day and that night.

I feel quite bad not remembering my hosts' names, who were so increadibly nice to me. But that's just a thing with names. The island is almost at 4000m above sea level, and for some people it's quite a challenge to hike up the hill to individual houses, so once we came to my "family's" house I was invited to a snack (visible on the picture below) and to take a rest. After about an hour I was served lunch, which consisted of a soup and different roots (including potatos, he he:)) and vegetables. They don't eat any meat, poultry or fish (which means I couldn't live there:)). Lunch, nevertheless, was quite tasty and of course, healthy.

After lunch we all met in the center of the village to hike to the top of the island to the temple of Pachatata, the God of all the things Above (cosmos). And since we were stopping on the way up for people to catch some breath at this altitude, we've also recieved a local stronomy lesson as well as a short rundown of the technological achievements of the "ancients."

Healthy and meatless dinner followed the walk, and the evening was concluded with a fiesta, where we could experience a simple but fun local dance, all dressed in traditional clothing (yes, a poncho and a colorful hat for me:)). I went to sleep under very warm Alpaca blankets. Getting out of that warm bed is a different story..