We were not in partying mood when we had arrived at the Titicaca lake. No sleep for days and always taking care for the equipment that lay in the bus luggage compartment unprotected. The landscape had changed a lot: The green had gone, the steep mountains had gone. Only hills left; the brown landscape and the blue sky. Altiplano now, 3800 m altitude, almost unrecognizable. The highest peak in Germany, we would be on the top now but here felt almost like riding along a coast.
First we had to ride along the Lago Grande northern part of the lake, later on along the Lago Pequeño which together form this 190 km long lake on 3,812 m.
Still a lot of indigenous people living here, almost only indigenous people to be correct. I didn’t closely observe the cultural differences between this part of Peru and the one we had just left with the bus. One thing probably was that here they didn’t shoot any longer at festivals, there was still music, of course, a loft of music indeed. Music everywhere as the cycling observer should find out during the exhausting altiplano ride ahead.
Almost all buildings here are made from adobe, but the roofs are a lot more sophisticated than what we had seen at Cordillera Blanca. The atmosphere had changed as well: Warm, totally dry days, non-stop sun from above and a seemingly less clear air. The smell was a different one, especially when coming close to the big lake which slowly passed by to the left.
Flat roads, often pretty straight for many kilometers. High speed riding compared to what we had experienced the weeks before. I put more pressure into the tires to ride more efficiently. In parts the road got really wonderful with almost no traffic or wide shoulders, but in other parts we also had dangerous sand on the road and simultaneous overtaking maneuvers.
There were plenty of slinging opportunities when stopping for a lunch break at the lake as you can see below. And the skills got more and more sophisticated, but still we missed everything you could miss, sometimes even the water 
The weather was nice and my father was cooking, so what better could I do than a small portrait shoot of the recumbent bike in the midday sun, in front of the blue lake and the blue sky.
Yes, I think these quad Seoul P4 LED light installation makes the recumbent bike look more cute, like C3PO from Star Wars.
The control center of the recumbent bike of my father. At the back the green GREENPEACE Ortlieb panniers, the mattress you sit on, the tiny little red bell on the left side of the handlebars together with the rear hydraulic rim brake. Now switching over to the right side you can see the Rohloff Speedhub shifter on the top of the handlebar, then the hydraulic front brake with some protection on the bottom.
In the center you find the rear suspension element and below the rack for the little panniers. The black teflon tubes tell the chain where to go and the small black wheel redirects the chain when the suspension element gets compressed.
Now here you can see the Forumslader black box with the 6V and 9-20V output, with the black shifter for the light and another tiny shifter for ON/OFF. There’s a steel feather inside the front fork for trouble free suspension, with the drawback of being really heavy and not very sensitive.
When they were not dancing you could often see the local people hang around with their sheep or goats making for nice countryside-culture pictures and a lot of communication opportunities. Always very communicative and not letting you go whithout throwing a thousand questions at you
The camping like the people was wonderfully pleasant here. Often the locals told us where we could camp and so we found this nice spot about 30 vertical meters above the road leading along the Lago Titicaca. Nice mornings, nice days, nice evenings and no concerns about bad weather any longer.
Turning our heads to the left we could always spot this massive mountain range behind the lake.
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