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Floating Islands
We were up rather early today as we had been told that we would be picked up from the hostel at 8 for a tour we'd booked the previous evening. We had our breakfast of bread, jam and tea before heading down to reception where we were informed that we were in fact half an hour early and woudn't be picked up until 8:30. We decided to use this time to get some money out and had a brief look at the church, park and railway station (which looks very British, this should be no surprise as we built all their railways for them!!) before settling our bill at the hostel and climbing into the minibus. As we drove around collecting other people we effectively got a quite comprehensive tour of the town, taking in all the main sites indicated on our tourist map. The main attraction is of course the beautiful cathedral and main plaza which are both rather impressive. Once the minibus was full we drove down to the docks where we boarded one out of the hundred or so tourist boats all headed out to the Uros islands on a similar trip to ours. The journey out took around 30mins during which we passed a hotel which strongly resembles a cruise ship which has crashed into one of the lakes islands! The Uros islands themselves are floating islands made of the reeds which grow so abundantly in this part of the lake and it is speculated that they formed when the Uros people sailed into the centre of the lake and attached all their boats together in order to escape the warring tribes which surrounded the lake at that time. After sailing around a little while to find an island which didn't already have a boatload of tourists on it we eventually moored up at 'Pachamama' island where we started with a brief talk by the island's president (every island has one) about the island itself. He told us that the islands are approximately 3m thick 2m below the surface and 1 above, they are held in place by 10 wooden stakes and last approximately 25 years. He also said that when there are arguments between the 6 or so families on the island they simply turn their houses around to face away from each other or in more extreme circumstances, saw the island in half!! We then spent about 25 mins looking round the small island, Mae and I also climbed up the watchtower to get a better view of the layout. There are hundreds of similar islands on the lake and the whole construction looks very much like a town with a central lake. We declined the offer of a trip to another island on a reed boat as at $2 each we felt it a bit pricey and instead took our tour boat over instead. Here we found a couple of restaurants and shops which we briefly looked around choosing to buy a cover for my Ipod from one of the stalls before taking our places back on the boat for the ride back to Puno. We arrived back at the hotel about 1 o'clock where they had sorted out our bus tickets for that evening while we had been away. We quickly used the internet to book a place in Cuzco and then went out again to explore the town. Puno is quite a lot bigger than Copacabana and we spent all afternoon looking round, once more seeing the cathedral and church along with their respective plazas, the market where we got 2 glasses of juice each and lunch for a total of $4 along with a few bits for the bus later. Finally we walked to the lake front through a rather large market where we successfully avoided buying anything more than a bottle of water. Moored up next to the boats we took that morning is the much larger and more impressive steam engined ship which was built in the UK and shipped over in more than 3000 pieces, it was the first engine powered vessel to sail on the lake and has now been decommissioned but still stands here for visitors to see. Finally it was time to walk back to the hostel, get our bags ready, have a cup of free tea and wait for the taxi to the bus station where we paid the departure tax and caught our bus to Cuzco with little hassle!!
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