Lake Titicaca Tour, April 9th
Thursday morning we were booked on a tour of Lake Titicaca with All Ways Travel, who picked us up from our hotel at 6:30am. It was pouring rain, which didn’t help.
At the port, Mary and I purchased ponchos for 5 soles each, which ended up only really coming in handy for our walk to the covered boat that morning. By the time we made it to our first stop at Uros island the sky had cleared, and the rain only started up again when we were on the boat throughout the day.
Uros islands are man-made out of reeds that grow in the lake. The people use the roots from the reeds as an anchor, and then pile the reeds on top to make the island’s surface. As the reeds disintegrate on the bottom, they are replaced with fresh ones on the top. The root anchors last over 100 years, and the fresh reeds are replaced almost constantly. I think if it hadn’t been raining earlier, the odor would have been more noticeable.
We spent maybe a half an hour on the islands, sitting through a short presentation on the history of the islands, how they were made, and what kind of life the Uros people have on them down. And then we shopped! (One guidebook calls the Uros islands “floating tourist stalls”, which is very accurate. Their livelihood pretty much depends on tourism these days.)
Next stop, Taquile island. There are 83 natural islands on the lake, and 53 made-made ones. Taquile is one of the larger natural islands, housing about 2,500 people. The setting on the island was gorgeous… some Euros commented that it looked Mediterranean.
We were again treated to a presentation on the local life, including details about their traditional clothing (single people are singled out with different colored hats and pom-poms) and dance.
After an opportunity to buy some local souvenirs, we had lunch, and then walked up and over the island to our boat that was waiting on the other side. On the way we stopped at the main square, weaved through their farms and houses, and then descended over 500 steps to the port.
It started to rain again on our way back to Puno. All Ways had shuttles waiting for us, and we were dropped back off at our hotel.
We had dinner at a great spot in town called Hero’s, and then we made our way back to the expat bar from our first night in town. This was probably our latest night out… we ended up waking up late for our bus the next morning!
[...] Navigated the highest navigable lake! [...]