FRENCH DINING

                                  Dining the French Way

     After biking all day dinnertime was a time to relax. The French dinner hour tends to be late, most often after 7:00 PM. For them dining is an event. We never had a dinner that lasted less than  two hours, and often it approached three hours at the table.

    Normally drinks, including water, are never included with  a meal overseas. If one asks for water chances are it will be a $3  bottle of water. So it was a pleasant surprise the first evening in Bordeaux to have wine served with our duck dinner.

    As it turned out we had plenty of wine every evening!  Of course we were in wine country where wines are extremely reasonable. But we also had the big boss along as our guide.  He came as a temporary sub for an injured guide, but after a couple of days the driver was emphatic that he must remain for the entire two weeks so as not to traumatize us—ha!  It turned out to be a great advantage. I guess the small boutique hotels we stayed in were just taking care of the boss  or were saying thank you for all the business he brought them. I’m guessing he never even saw the rather large bar bills.

    The service was generally slow in comparison to US standards. The food was generally good, and the company and conversation were most pleasant. Those evening meals were a great way to wind down after a busy and full day of biking and sight-seeing.

    A bottle of wine just about fills four glasses. The fellows on the trip were not a bit hesitant about holding up an empty bottle in the air  to be replaced. The wines were excellent and flowed freely the entire trip---without costing us bikers a single penny!

LAKE TITICACA

                                             A High Altitude City

  Puno, located on the Andean plateau is dominated by Lake Titicaca, sacred place of the Incas and home to natural and artificial islands. Titi means puma and caca means stone.   The Incas thought Lake Titicaca was shaped somewhat like a puma, but after looking at a map, I thought that took a lot of imagination. The highest navigable lake in the world is 100 miles long and covers 3200 square miles. The depth ranges from 15-20 to 900-feet deep with the northern end of the lake  the deepest. The altitude and hot sun cause a tremendous amount of evaporation.  Titicaca, located between Peru and Bolivia, is the largest lake in South America.

     Spanish founded Puno in 1668 because of its closeness to the colonial silver mine of Laykakota. The altitude is 12,565-feet above sea level and the greater  area population is 102,800. Its inhabitants are proud of their Quechua and Aymara past. Many inhabitants, especially women, daily wear colorful traditional dress

    Puno is a small port city where the main industry is tourism.  Agriculture and cattle raising are important and the area is well known for its herds of llamas and alpacas. The main crops are potato, quinoa  and other tubers, but limited access to fertilizers and seeds means low yields allowing only for subsistence farming.

    Smoke from unvented fires wafts through Puno’s streets, along with edgy waves of traffic with constant  honking horns including taxis and three-wheeled cycles that urge pedestrians to the narrow slivers of sidewalks. It is not a pedestrian friendly city.  Puno’s churches are characterized by their distinctive colonial architecture. Several plazas provide shops and restaurants.

    Rural population struggles with poverty where surviving is the main priority, illiteracy is high at 22% and higher among females than males. Health and malnutrition are related to extreme poverty, lack of clean water and sanitation infrastructure..

    The big attraction for tourists visiting Puno is the Eros people and their floating islands which were once their homes. More about them on another day