A Starry Night :)

Today at half past 12 we were picked up by a private minibus to commence our weekend to Lake Titicaca. Carina, Danny and me being the early risers went to get snacks (Tucumanas, crisps and skittles) for the journey and after a delayed/slightly stressful pre-departure trying to find Carina's passport and with Rodrigo off purchasing CDs we left a little after 1.

The journey wasn't as long as expected and was really interesting. We chilled drinking pacena beer and drove through El Alto and I had never really paid much attention before at just how big the city really is and at how quickly it is expanding. It is actually one of the fastest growing urban-centers! After 20mins or so of driving you begin to see little homes in the middle of nowhere with very basic set-ups. It's crazy but sort of nice at the same time to see how differently people can live with next to nothing.

Perhaps slightly ironic, we arrived around 2 to a lovely spa hotel! Rodrigo did good :) although we always knew he would...geg! We were welcomed with some coca tea, chose our dinner for the evening and were shown to our rooms which were ridiculously nice considering I've been used to staying in hostels for the last few months. The beds were so comfy and even had electric blankets and we had a beautiful view of the lake aswell.

We headed back down to reception after that to visit 2 museums on the grounds of th hotel which told us about the Aymaran (indigenous) history and natural medicines/rituals that they use which was pretty interesting and we even got to visit a witch doctor at the end and get our fortunes/questions read by coca leaves. We then moved on to the eco village where a man was waiting to tell us about his story of his many generation's of family building boats out of reeds and travelling the world. We were able to get on the boat and have a look around, it strangely didn't feel too different from a normal boat!

Then it was dinner time. I had the trout and it was so good...freshly caught from the lake :) We also had some quinuo soup to begin which was really tasty again.

Straight after dinner we headed to the obsertatorium to hear a little about stars and constellations. All of a sudden the roof opened up and we were exposed to the most amazing and beautiful star filled sky. There was also a ridiculously big telescope positioned so we could see Mars and Orion's Belt. I tried so long to capture a picture and in the end wasn't patient enough for the slow shutter speed, hence the distant face in my pic above. However, I'm impressed at my first semi-successful star picture.

To end the night we chilled in the room drinking and chatting and most of us went to bed at a half-decent hour to sleep up for our tour of the lake tomorrow.