WEDNESDAY – LAKE TITICACA

 When we arrived at Puno last night, it was raining, miserable and cold so we weren't sure what today would bring but it brought perfect weather for our day cruise on the lake. We didn't need the many layers of clothing we wore.

There are a fleet of boats which could best be described as floating buses and we spent the day on one with a guide John.

Our first stop and the undoubted highlight of the day was time spent on the floating reed islands of Uros. They are floating islands of which there are about 90 made of reeds on which people live in houses they construct, again from reeds. The islands are spongy to walk on but there is apparently three metres of floating reed structure on which everything else is constructed. The islands have a life of approximately 20 years after which they need to be abandoned and a new island constructed. There is no shortage of fresh water but the only power they have is what they can store in batteries from solar panels.

The people are wonderfully friendly and have developed an industry being visited by and entertaining tourists. They dressed us up in their traditional clothes and, as silly as we looked, it was a bit of fun.

 

 

They also took us for a ride in their traditional reed vessel. We later learnt that, to give the vessels a longer life, they are now built on a platform of used plastic bottles to give them greater buoyancy than they had when they were simply made of reeds.

 

 

It has become necessary to develop the tourist industry because their traditional life style of fishing is no longer viable. Of the 43 species which used to inhabit the lake, only three remain. The rest have been wiped out by trout and kingfish which were introduced.

They have schools and a church on the floating island. The one we visited had the community kindergarten located on it. It's hard to imagine how they live on the islands with babies and toddlers but they do.

 

From there, we went to Taqui Island where the inhabitants maintain a traditional lifestyle. There are no vehicles of any kind and anything which needs to be brought to the island has to be carried by hand up the very steep hills. The lake looks very much like the Mediterranean but, of course, it is all fresh water. It is so large that it feels that you are looking at the ocean. The water stretches to the horizon. Apparently there is a pollution problem but we saw no evidence of that.

 

 

Tomorrow, we visit our last country, Bolivia. Should be fun.