Puno Festivities

We took another long and windy bus ride to Puno from Arequipa. The main tourist attraction of Puno is Lake Titicaca, but we were lucky enough to be traveling through the town when they were celebrating the Virgen de la Candelaroa (one of their many annual festivities). Ruby and I fell in love with the city after getting lost over and over again in their crazy and vibrant streets. Puno is full of bike cabs (more advanced than Eugene, some of them even had motors on them)... so however lost we got, we could easily get back to where we wanted to be for less than a dollar!

Even though we were some of the only White people in the city, we felt the passion that the locals had in their city and culture. Although we missed the main celebration which takes place on Saturday and Sunday, we were still able to experience Puno during celebration...the streets were packed until after we went to sleep (even the children stayed up later than us!), there was a huge parade on friday night that seeemed to last all night and morning, or at least picked up again at four in the morning marching down our street and circling around and around for hours...I don´t know where they got their energy from!
It was an amazing experience though, it almost seemed sureal being in Puno...the city is over 12,000 feet in elevation! It was super hot during the day so Ruby and I were cruising around with shorts and tank tops on, only to notice that everybody was staring at us, not only because we were White but because they were shocked that we were not covered up...I guess they were right cause after a day in the sun we both had sun burns, even though we put sunscreen on!

The first night that we were there, we were heading back to our hostel and came across a large circle of people applausing...we decided to check it out, and it was a man who was dressed in drag doing some kind of comedy show..as soon as we walked up to the circle, we found ourselves at center of attention. As we were the only White people in the crowd, David (the comedian) decided to spend the next ten or fifteen minutes of his show cracking jokes at us or about us..who knows cause we couldn´t understand anything that was going on..but we were good sports and just laughed....and we were able to escape once a couple of Europeans came along...

Puno was my favorite city so far...it still amazes me how cheap things are here. We went to one of the nicest restaurants in Puno and spent less than ten dollars on dinner (two dollars for a delicious glass of wine, and three dollars for a gourmet personal pizza)...I´m going to be shocked when I come back to the States and have to spend over five or ten dollars on a simple meal!