Vacation!!!

So this past week, my friend and teammate, Mindy and I headed out for adventures in south Peru! Since we work only in North Peru, we haven't had the chance to visit some of the popular tourist destinations in the south. So we set out first for a city called Puno. Puno is located on Lake Titicaca, which is a huge lake that borders Peru and Bolivia. It's located at like 13,000 feet above sea level, so it is cold at night! The first night there, we stayed overnight on an old restored, historic boat. This boat was adorable! It was originally built in the 1800's and was brought down from England to Peru, and it has recently been turned into a bed and breakfast. We were the only ones staying there that night, so we had it all to ourselves! The crew was super nice and made us feel right at home. Mindy and I each had a small room with a bunk bed to sleep on. When I say small, I mean small! sitting down on the bed, you could touch all four walls! I didn't get much sleep that night; the bed was barely wider than I was! But regardless of little sleep, it was a very cool, enjoyable experience!
After our boat stay, we spent a couple more days in Puno. We had the opportunity to get out on the lake on a boat and tour a couple of islands. The first tour was of some floating islands called Los Uros. There are 40 of these islands that are made of reeds and literally float! People actually live on these islands! It was neat to see their way of life! One other island we toured was called Taquile. We hiked all the way across this island. It was pretty straight uphill on the start of the hike, and if you have ever been in altitude that high, you know there is a lack of oxygen! This hike was definitely harder than it would have been at sea level! But it was well worth, the walk down the other side was beautiful! Lake Titicaca is huge and absolutely amazing!
From Puno, we moved on by bus to a town called Arequipa. What we noticed right away about Arequipa is that it is very different from any other city we had visited in Peru. It was more modern and had kind of a more European feel to it. We decided not to do any of the usual local tourist things there, and just rested and enjoyed the atmosphere of the city there. We loved that city!
After Arequipa we still had some more traveling to do, and bused down even farther south to a city called Tacna. Now there is absolutely nothing special about Tacna. The beauty of Tacna is that it is a town that borders Chile, and you can easily cross the border to get a little taste of Chile. So we used Tacna for just that, a stopover town. So we left 7:30am Peru time to head to Chile. It's just a 30 minute drive to Arica, which is in Chile. We stopped through customs and got a new stamp in our passport, chile! Have to be proud of that! When we arrived in Chile it was 10:00am. No, it didn't take us 2 1/2 hours to arrive. As son as you cross into Chile, the time is 2 hours ahead! So that was weird. From the very beginning, we could tell that Chile was very different than Peru! The first couple hours we experienced a mini culture shock! Sure, it looked similar to Peru, and the people were the same too, but just something about the atmosphere was very different, and of course all the stores were different too. But we got used to it, and really enjoyed our day there! We walked along the Pacific Ocean and down some popular shopping areas. It was so fun, being in Chile!
That was the end of our vacation! We thoroughly enjoyed it! We needed it, because now starts the busy season with teams! March will be full of work and ministry!
Pics to come!