Puno Stinks! (in a good way)

Due to the combined factors of my increasing laziness and my sneaking suspicion that the only people reading this are my parents, i´ve found the inspiration to blog diminishing exponentially. Now if you´re wondering if it´s possible for something to diminish exponentially I must admit that I don´t have the slightest idea. I´m a writer.
Despite these newfound obstacles on my blogging path I´ve decided to overcome adversity and spanish internet to give you all (and I use that term loosely) some form of update. We are now in Puno, a city with a funny name on the banks of a lake with the ultimate name, Titicacha. Despite (or because of) their comedic titles, we´re having a great time here. Puno is a beautiful, bustling city built into the surrounding mountains with a rich, active cultural life. Unlike our previous experiences in Europe we´re finding every one of our stops to be very authentic, with the locals eating in the same restaurants as us, using the same transportation, and generally engaging in the same activities. Today we actually went down to the lake, and it is breathtakingly beautiful. Deep blue water, open skies and scenic mountains and islands are in every eye-full, and it is difficult to look away. We also went to see some Incan burial ruins, and a long the way saw some agricultural ¨towns¨with classic south american casas and amazingly friendly inhabitants. The amount of poverty is sobering, and I experienced some heartbreak at the sight of small, dirty children hounding tourists for a few Soles (3 to 1 on the American dollar). I often find myself explaining to every single person who asks for money exactly why I can´t give any, to the extreme amusement of Avi and Jed at my broken spanish.
Now that I´ve sufficiently depressed you I´ll leave my pangs of conscience to myself and tell you about the rest of our day. After our return to the city we stopped into a restaurant and had some Alpaca steak (which was sadly unimpressive) and enjoyed some live entertainment. The performers were pretty bad as performers go but Jed and I did join the female dancers in some classic Peruvian dance. That is, I did...Jed showed off some of his Hora dance skills and even tried some bump in grind (and almost succeeded).
Overall its been a good day. Keep posted for some more great stories.