Lake Titicaca & The Islands

We were picked up at our hostel by a van full with people and driven to the marina in Puno. There we all got on the boat. There were over 12 people in our group so I remember very few of them.

The boat slowly got out of the green goo that is the Puno marina and we started navigating our way through the reeds. Eventually we came out at the Uros floating islands. These are islands that are made up of reeds. There are over 2000 people living on them, mostly for the tourists. Our guide Leo described the reeds and what they're good for. We tasted the reeds. They tasted like nothing. Later we took a ride on one of the reed boats. It wasn't particularly exciting.

After the Uros we were headed for the main part of Lake Titicaca and the island of Amantani. The boat ride took a few hours and we were kicking ourselves for not bringing some reading material. On first view of the island it looked as though it was made out of Lego blocks. The entire island was covered with farming terraces. On the island we were each assigned a family and a home and followed our new family to their home. The women were dressed like nuns and were spinning wool as they were walking. They led us up at a fast pace up the hill, which seemed like torture for those not acclimatized. We had no problems keeping up but were short of breath every now and then.

The room assigned to us was surprisingly nice with very comfortable beds. It was on the second floor and we had to go up a staircase and crouch very low to get it. It was like an elfish little house. Our new "mother" Irma made soup for us in her small little kitchen right over an open fire she fueled with logs. The soup was quite good. The second course was a variety of potatoes with cheese. The cheese was quite gross, mostly because it was chewy and squeeky (the only thing on the menu that wasn't grown there) but the potatoes were tasty. After lunch Sophie bought various clothing from Irma that she knitted herself.

We headed down to the soccer field and watched the locals play the visitors. The locals were keeping tourist butt as they were all acclimatized to this very high altitude of about 3900m. Following the soccer game we all hiked up to the top of the Island at 4000m to watch the sunset over Lake Titicaca from the Incan Temple of Pacha Tata (father of the universe). We could even see the Cordillera Real in Bolivia from the island.

We hiked back down in the twilight of the sunset and got led back to our house by the daughter of Irma. She was about 8 years old and dressed in those clothes looked like a little elf. The whole walk back felt like something out of a fantasy book. She didn't speak much Spanish or we couldn't understand what she was saying most of the time. She kept trying to tell us she has a fever and is quite sick. Back at our home we had a dinner cooked by Irma and were told to get ready for the fiesta.

It got really cold once the sun set. I put on all of my clothing, my fleece, my jackets and was still quite cold. Irma then came and gave us some traditional clothing to put on for the fiesta and dressed Sophie in those Nun like clothes.

Irma was in charge of the drinks this night so we helped her carry some of them down. She just wrapped a dozen or so bottles in a cloth and tied it to her front and carried the whole thing on her back. Seemed like she had no problems.

We got to the fiesta room and it soon got crowded with locals and other tourists dressed in the traditional island clothing. It quickly got hot and once the dancing started I was sweating buckets. I kept getting invited to dance and because of all the clothing I had on was sweating like a pig. Some of the dancing was very high paced and the songs seemed to drag on for way too long (there were two bands but they were both equally bad...I couldn't tell one song from another). I thought hiking up at elevation was tough but dancing was a hell of a lot more difficult...

The next morning we left our family and headed over to another island called Taquile. We did a quick hike followed by lunch at a restaurant and headed back to Puno by boat.

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