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Hola and welcome to Puno! A city which had nothing special if it wasn´t for the Titicaca lake and the floating islands in it.
Here I met Ira! (one of the few readers of this blog) who flew all the way from Israel to travel with me for 2.5 weeks in Peru! :D
After a very long flight (well, flights actually) - we met at a hostel and went out to dinner to try out... Llama steak. I likes it, Ira preferred the Titicaca lake´s trout. Which was also good... :)
The next morning we headed straight on to the place of the Uro tribe - The floating islands. These islands are actually a way the Uro tribe found to keep itself away from trouble...
In order to get away from vicious tribes who used to live around lake Titicaca, the Uro started building huge artificial islands on the Titicaca lake using the local straw that grew abundant. They used anchors to keep their islands at the desired spot, and built many boats to help them move from an islands to the other and to the shore of the lake.
The people here live on the islands and leave as they please to the ¨big city¨ of Puno. They have a school for the kids on the biggest island, and mostly provide themselves through tourism. This may explain the song they sang to us as we left their island by boat...
All in all they were very friendly and hospitable, showed us inside their homes and taught us their way of life. It was especially interesting to see the kids running around on the islands, and see cows and pigs trotting on the straw ground. Apparently (although they didn´t speak of it) - they also have some electricity in their homes since they have solar panels next to each house...
Visiting the islands has been incredibly interesting, although terribly touristic as well. But I can´t really complain as it was one of the most unusual experiences i´ve had in this area so far. Even had my passport stamped :D
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