The Adventures of Kerri & Matt

There were many kids at the community we stayed in on Lake Titicaca.

Even though they frequently take in visitors, the kids were mesmerized by the camera, and Kerri had 3 of them in her lap as soon as she sat down with it.

This is a picture the 8 year old girl took.

We stayed overnight with a local family at Magno in the Llachon community on peninsula Capachica.

Our room was in a mudbrick house with a too short doorway.

It was not heated, and the elevation is high enough that it freezes at night, but we had many layers of wool blankets to keep us warm.

We dressed in the traditional clothing for the evening, which was delightfully pink.

Kerri’s hat is beautifully embroidered with colourful pompoms.

The jacket is embroidered too, but you can’t see it in the first picture because it’s under the poncho.

The embroidered jackets and hats are only for married women.

Then we went down to help peel and chop vegetables for dinner.

This is the mother and father of the family we stayed with. We also met their 11 year old daughter. They have 3 other children.

Before dinner Matt (and the rest of the group) played volleyball with the locals.

This was before we dressed in the local outfits.

Which you would think would be a big advantage to us.

Particularly when it comes to heroic efforts to get the ball.

But apparently you can take volleyball seriously in a skirt.

And we lost.

And there was a rematch.

And we lost again.

They take their volleyball seriously.

Whereas most of us had not played in over a decade.

Which resulted in a lot of this.

Sometimes we made it a closer game.

Other times we just watched them rack up points.

The final games were boys against the girls, with the teams mixed between the locals and the intrepid group.

The first game the boys won, the second game the girls won, but the final game the boys were triumphant again. More importantly I didn’t wreck any of my clothes by diving on the hard ground.

While at Llachon we helped our host family weed their garden and shuck corn for dinner.

Their corn kernels are not yellow, they are white with purple.

On some the purple parts were speckled.

They also had weird looking sheep.