Water water everywhere

Ok, it´s been a while, through a combo of laziness, illness and remoteness!
Got to Puno ok, it was a bit of a trek and only 1 dodgy toilet stop during the 6 hours, but not too bad. Puno is a bit of a dive, about 2 decent restaurants, a nice cake shop (I recommend the chocolate cake) and a dubious market. Fortunately all we did the 1st day was eat in teh afternoon then crash out. The next day got up early to get a boat to some islands in Lake Titicaca. They are about 3 hours boat ride away, so had a bit of a dodgy time gettign there as it was windy, but no-one (not even the 4 hung-over aussies we picked up) chucked, so that was good. The 1st Island was Taquille Island, it´s a community of about 3000 who run their island as a co-operative. They have very good knittwear and woven stuff, but I was a bit broke at the time, so just boaght a headband type thing. Anyway, all the restaurants on the island sell exactly the same food for the same price so no-one throws a strop, it´s a bit wierd to be told that all you can have is Quniau soup (like cous-cous) and trout or a veggie tortilla, but it was nice and keeps them all happy, so was fine. Then we headed to Amantani Island for a homestay with a local family. Our guy was called Cesar(can´t remember his wife´s name) and had 4 kids from 4 to 16. They lived up a very steep hill and it was at 4,100m, so despite surviving teh Lares Trek we were all a bit knackered by the time we got to the house. They get a lot of tourists, but spread them around the families, so they get 2 or 3 groups a month. it is a traditional village and most of them still work in agriculture just up the mountain so have a subsistence style lifestyle. Still, our place had electricity via solar panels, but not all did. They didn´t use the electricity much, only for lights for a couple of hours in the evening. The mother still cooks on a stove and the toilet is a hut that you have to fluch water down to flush which was pretty grim. still they were v nice and fortunatley spoke spanish as well as Chechquia (bad spelling of local language). The locals took on the visitors at football, which was funny - everywhere in Peru no matter how small has a football pitch - then we hit the most interesting part. We had to dress up in traditional dress of 2 skirts, a blouse, a coloured belt and a head scarf. Ours stank. It was really unpleasant, but very funny. the guys got away lightly, all they had to wear was a poncho and a hat, but a few of the guys from the other group wore dresses anyway which amused teh locals! There was a traditional dnace that we went to where we had to dance with the family, it was a pretty basic dance but they go on for about 10mins, which is pretty gruelling at altitude. Anyway the next day we headed off to another set of islands which were made of Reeds. Apparently the islands last for 100years and then they get so thick they hit the bottom of the lake and get used for farming. Anyway they are a bit mad to be on, they have a post office and some schools and have a great method of fixing neighbour disputes - they just get a long knife and cut the island in half! Unfortunately this happens a bit more now as the tourism industry has divided a lot of the people. We got to go in a reed canoe as well which was fun before heading back to puno to a nice restaurant and a bit of a sleep before heading off the next day for Bolivia.