On my second trip through Peru, I again found myself on the shores of Lake Titicaca. Four years before, I had booked a daytrip to the island of Taquile with my friends. This time, I was part of a whole group that arranged an overnight stay on the island of Amantaní.

The day of our arrival was busy. First, we stepped off the boat and were immediately divided into twos for placement in different islanders’ homes. Later in the evening, we were taken on a headache inducing, high-altitude climb to the highest point on the island (really, it was only about 500 ft, but since we were starting off around at around 12,500, that was pretty significant!), and finally we finished off the night frenetically dancing with the local ladies while their husbands and sons played music in a dark room on a dark stage.

One of the day’s highlights happened just after I had unloaded my pack and got squared away with our host family. My roommate and I decided to explore what little we could of the island in the time we had before dinner (and to hopefully discover where a few of our other friends would be staying.) Just down the rocky hillside from our house, we happened across three kids playing on a large rock.

Each boy happened to be working with some clay they had dug up from the ground somewhere. One of the older ones had almost completed work on a reasonable facsimile of a boat and talking about it seemed like a natural icebreaker. We earned their trust (and curiosity) quickly and it wasn’t long before they were asking us where we were from and trying on our sunglasses. After awhile I pulled out my camera and asked if I could take some pictures.

This picture is of the youngest boy in the group. He didn’t say much and he wasn’t much of an artist yet with his clay, but he was clearly the most photogenic. Besides just being a cute picture, one of the reasons I love it so much is because of something that happened later. Late that night, I was showing some of the pictures I had taken of Amantaní earlier in the day to the dancing ladies in the town hall. When this one came up on my LCD screen, one of the women shrieked in delight: “That’s my son!”