I left Cusco and headed for Puno which is located on Lake Titicaca - one of the worlds highest lakes. Heading out on the lake is a must do in Puno, and I was curious to see what they refer to as the floating islands.

The Islas Flotantes have to be seen to be believed. They are made by the island people by digging up the roots of the reeds and tying them together block by block. When they have enough blocks they secure the island to the bottom of the lake using rope and then put a thick layer of reeds on the surface. Even the houses were made mostly of reeds!

The houses can be picked up and moved around the island so that the reeds can be replaced! The people on the islands were very welcoming and showed us around their simple homes. We left the floating islands to head further out on the lake to the island of Taquile!

The first thing you are greeted by on the island is small children looking for money. They are so sweet and very hard to say no to. We had lunch in the main square of the island and while we were there the local government was presenting all the mothers on the island with gifts, as mothers day had been the day before. Each mother was presented with a coloured basin and a bottle of fizzy drink- just shows you how different life is here.

Men on the islands wear different coloured hats according to their marital status and women wear red and black clothes if they are married and multicoloured clothing if they are single. Also if women are married they tie their plaits together and if they are single they leave them untied.

After Puno it was south to Bolivia, and to one of the highest cities in the world, La Paz. La Paz is a vibrant city with so many market stalls its hard to imagine that they all make a living! A great place to shop and get bargains though as Bolivia is one of the cheapest countries in South America. La Paz is home to the worlds most dangerous road and what do tour companies do but bring tourists mountain biking on it! From the beginning of the tour until the end, our tour guide Dale told us horror stories about people getting hurt and killed on the road and you can see why.

The road hugs a cliff and the drop is about 300 feet in some parts and to make it more dangerous you go down the road on the left side i.e beside the drop. To make things even more adventurous there road is gravel and stone for two thirds of the ride down! Anyway guys I survived! I had a few skids on the way down which resulted in near heart failure but I did it. I promised my mother that this would be the last dangerous thing I do before coming home to Ireland!

Next on the agenda was Uyuni a small town in the south which was our entry point to the massive Salt Flats. I had seen pictures of the Salt Flats and was curious to see a never ending landscape of Salt. Imagine a desert, completely white, flat, and covering 20,000sq kilometres! We took a day tour out in a jeep from Uyuni. Walking on the salt for the first time is strange because it looks so much like snow but has a completely different texture. The locals stack up piles of the salt which are then taken away to be processed for consumption.

We stopped in one village and were shown how they process the salt. Our guide told us that there was a sea where the salt flats were thousands of years ago, and that is why so much salt still remains. We stopped at the Salt Hotel which is a complete hotel built with salt bricks, everything inside was made with salt too! It was a sight to behold. We then headed up to Isla de los Pescadores which was a strange island in the middle of the desert covered in cacti; there was coral on the island again indicating that there was sea there at some stage. Our final stop was the nearby volcano where some pink flamingo birds were feeding.

I’m heading to Argentina next. It’s going to be a long journey to Buenos Aires! I’m hoping to find some warmer weather there as I’ve been freezing since I first arrived in South America!  I’ll let you know how it goes amigos!
Rois x