After the Inca Trail, we stayed overnight in Aguas Calientes (hot water). There is a natural hot spring there. We did our laundry, got a hostel (4 bucks a night), etc.  The one thing that sucked about the place was that there was absolutely no way to get money. No bank. No ATM. Nothing. Weird. Well, the next day we caught a tourist train back to Cuzco, and met some people from Wisconsin. We talked to them about literature at politics (the guy was an English professor).  They were taking their daughter on a graduation trip. Well, when we got back we immediately took a taxi to the Plaza de Armas, and booked a night bus to Puno and Lake Titicaca.  We got our stuff from the hotel really quickly as we had little time to catch the 9:30 bus.  We got on, but it wasn't a sleeper bus like we thought. We started our journey, and a pirated version of The Pianist (in Spanish) came on. Ugh. So I listened to music and tried to fall asleep. I never really did. At about 4 am, our bus just stopped. We waited, not knowing what was going on. At about 5, we finally realized some Peruvian strike was happening. The whole road in front of the bus was covered in rocks, big and small, that they had put into the road to block traffic.  We met up with some hot girls from Brazil, Switzerland, and Germany, and strapped on our backpacks and started walking down this really long, flat road.  Just for sport, I tossed another rock into the mix. :)  We walked for something like 5 or 6 kilometers, passing hundreds of Peruvians who were quite clearly enjoying themselves. We would say hi and exchange "how are you's", it was a lot of fun. Eventually, we reached the end of the road block, and got in a taxi with like 10 people. A few minutes later, we made it to Puno, where we found a hostel and put our crap down.  We booked an all day tour for tomorrow for a tour of the lake and the floating islands by boat. Should be fun. Then we went for breakfast with the German girls.  After that, I slept for a while and then took a shower. We walked around downtown, took some pictures, saw the sights.  Then we went to dinner, where we had alpaca.  It was really very good. A lot like the beef in the Chinese dish broccoli beef. After that, we went and saw some gate thingy from some war in the 1800's, and then walked through some Peruvian food markets.  We were pretty much the only white people there, it was very busy and confusing. We walked down to the lake, but it was dark and hard to see. That is for tomorrow, anyways.  We would like to go to Bolivia, but that isn't going to happen as a result of the road strike thingy.  I'll probably go to bed now, we have to be picked up at 6:45 for the tour tomorrow.

We woke up early yesterday to go on our Lake Titicaca tour.  Our German friends thought it was an hour later, so our tour group was a bit late.  We went out to the port, where we got on a mid sized boat.  We went out into the lake, it was very shallow in this area with lots of reeds growing and everything.  We went to the Uros islands first, which are floating reed islands. People just live on these big raft things, with pigs and ducks and whatever.  Some of these islands have stores and post offices. Its very interesting. We took a reed boat to one of the other Uros islands, which was very cool.  They have faces made into the front like viking ships.  We went out for like 2 more hours on the normal boat to another island, this one not floating.  It rained on the way there, but in typical Tihen style it was beautiful on arrival.  We hiked up to the top of this island, were we ate lunch (fish, so so) and had a look around.  The weird thing is this lake is huge, and you can often not see the other side. However, it is at 12,500 feet. Crazy.  We got back to the hotel eventually, our boat took its sweet ass time, but I got to meet some cool people, including 2 British guys from Bristol and a girl from Idaho who´s parents work for the forest department.  We talked about the environment and whatnot, good times.  When we got back, we went with the Germans to a pizza place, where we ate pizza and drank beer for a few hours.  Some festival occurred all the sudden outside, but the band kinda sucked, so we stayed inside.  Then we went and got on the bus.