Homeward bound....

We´re currently sitting in Lima at an Internet Cafe, trying to pass time before we have to go back to the airport and catch our flight tonight. It´s tricky typing right now...the keys are sticking and the symbols are never where we´re used to. It seems as though keyboards change from one location to another.
We arrived in Puno (town near Lake Titicaca) on Sunday evening after a full day tour from Cusco to Puno by bus. We stayed pretty close to our hotel for the duration of our stay in Puno...but tried to be IN our hotel room as little as possible due to not having heat (restuarants provided much better warmth from the ovens. It was not hard to spend lots of time in the restaurants as the service is extremely SLOW in Puno - meals taking hours (they don´t work for tips). Other than that and the limited hot water in the shower, the hotel was pretty nice. We went to Sillistani (basically a graveyard for Inka and pre-Inka people) on Monday afternoon, with a tour guide who claimed to speak English but only gave the tour in Español (Correne struggled to understand). Luckily there was a Ecuadorian girl who noticed confusion and did a lot of translating.
On Tuesday morning we got up early and headed to the floating Uros islands (made of reeds) and the island of Taquile. We had a great guide, a nice boat trip on the lake, and saw some spectacular views. We took a boat made of reeds from one floating island to another, navigated by the president of the island we started on. At Taquile Island, we toured the main square and ate lunch at the house of a family who provided us with trout from the lake, rice, french fries, and some tasty quinoa soup. We ended our tour with a climb down over 500 stairs to the dock where our boat met us for our 2 1/2 hour trip back to Puno. We were both exhausted by the time we returned.
Today we flew from Juliaca (dirty town near Puno) to Lima, and have been touring the city a little while we wait for our 12:30 am flight tonight. While in the plaza here in Lima, we watched the changing of the guards and some Peruvian school children approached us for an interview in English for the English class they are taking (I guess we really stand out). We were more than happy to help them with their English speaking skills.
We are excited and ready to be back home (especially Correne, who would really like to start eating vegetables and dairy again). The next 24 hours may be long......
We´ll be home tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon.
Until then....hasta luego!
-C & T