Seedy Hotels and Floating Islands

In all honesty I wasn't planning on writing tonight, but I'm stuck in my hotel room wide awake waiting to skype someone about stuff with the foundation.  What else was I supposed to do?  I'm surprised that the internet is working so well.  I guess thats as good a reason as any to take advantage of the time I have and write a little bit.
Today I got to see the floating Islands on lake Titicaca.  I found out that they pronounce the c's like the h in hanukah.  Its a throaty sound.  Titicaca means grey puma or stone puma, depending on the local dialect.  Pumas were a big deal for the ancient inhabitants of Peru.  Maybe thats why BYU has so many study abroads and internships in Peru, because we have the same mascot.

The islands were incredible.  They each last 50-100 years but require constant maintenance.  Each island is about 9 feet thick with floating chunks of root comprising the base, and reeds stacked on top to keep everyone dry.  I asked a girl if they ever fall in the water.  She laughed and said they did, but they all know how to swim so its fine.

The reason I'm in Puno is to rescreen a stake that is already participating in the nutrition program.  We did that yesterday.  The town we went to is on the Bolivia-Peru border and is called Yunguyo.  Everyone in the town has rosy cheeks because its so cold, and most of the women wear typical clothes.  We screened a few kids, in reality not too many showed up.  But there was one girl who entered the program and was severely malnourished according to the measurements.  I saw how low she was and it was a real blow.  Some of these kids don't have much to eat, and what they do have isn't very healthy or nutritious.  They like to eat this thing here called Chuño, which is basically mashed potatoes (feet are used to mash them) made into a ball and left out to dry.  Then when they want to eat they boil and rehydrate the black potato ball and voilà.  As bad as that sounds it actually tastes pretty good.  The thing that I don't like is chuños cousin (I forgot the name), which undergoes the same process but is left in a river for a while.  It ends up transparent and has a taste like the fat left on the pot after you cook a roast.
Well I've digressed.  Before coming here to the land of Chuño I was in Cusco for a week or so.  I saw Machu Picchu, hiked Machu Picchu Mountain and saw a chinchilla in its natural habitat.  However I think my highlight of the stay in Cusco was riding horses above the city to a few Inca ruins.  We hopped on the horses and rode to famous sights, and some sights that we had never heard of.  One had a sacrificial table deep inside a rock.  Another was a labyrinth of caves and tunnels called Area X.  The views were incredible, with vast plains looking over Cusco valley.  On the way back we were late to the last site, so we galloped across the plains and made it just in time to see it before it closed.  Well almost in time.  We got kicked out after 10 minutes but at least we saw a little.

Thats all I'm going to write for right now.  Hopefully later I'll write more, probably when I'm in another seedy hotel with surprisingly good internet.