Arica and Lake Titicaca

We arrived in Arica the northest big City in Chile and went on the search for our hostel. It was a nice place, we shared a room with 2 canadians and it was my first hostel where I got a welcome snack... We also had our own kitchen and bathroom, really nice.
The next thing we did was going to check out the bus times for the next day to Peru, the problem was just that the people told us there won´t be any busses going to Peru the next day because of a strike... We said ok we´ll see and went to an internet place to check our mails and there we found out that the guys were in Arica, too. Stefan, Jono and Thomas flew to Arica after their little "adventure" in Brazil, what a nice coincident. We called them up and just a bit later we found us in the city with them and Wally and a lot of Torres de cerveza. Was a great evening. The next day then Amanda and Franzi, Luis and the Spanish arrived in Arica as well and it became an even greater reunion when we found Maria and Chris walking by at the busstation :D
After a nice lunch in the City and some hang out time at the beach we took a bus to Tacna in Peru and it was actually pretty fast, maybe an hour and we were there. YEAH PERU!!!
Peru is really so different from Chile, you see it the moment you cross the border. It is very colorful and the women all wear those big skirts and carry a ton of stuff with them. The spanish gets slower and a lot easier to understand.
Our actual plan from there on was to take a bus right away to Puno to see Lake Titicaca, but after the strike from the day before all busses were booked out, so we spend a night in a very simple and also very very cheap hostel, had some food from a street stand and took the first bus in the morning around 8am. The thing with the busses in Peru is, you should never trust on their given schedule. We planned on arriving around 5, seeing the lake doing some stuff and taking a night bus to Cusco, but like always everything came a bit different :D
We arrived arround maybe 8.30 and then decided to stay over night. Amanda and me were pretty hungry and went out to get some food and we found this really nice little pizza place across the street, sooo good, Pizza baked over fire and coca mate tea.
The next morning we went to get our bus tickets for the night and walked down to the harbor to take a boat out on Lake Titicaca. We went on those swimming Islands made out of reed, it was pretty interesting to see that people live like this, its like a whole village out of islands like this.
soon more... :D