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We stayed in Cuzco for one more night and then we left on Saturday morning (10th Nov) and headed south towards Puno and Lake Titicaca. Our bus left at 8am and took 6 hours to wind throught the hills until we arrived in Puno. While we were on the bus a guy had approached us offering accomodation. There was a free transfer to the hostel and hot water (most places in Puno don´t supply hot water!) so we decided to go with him, as did all of the other Gringos on the bus!
When we arrived at the hostel there was a horrible fusty smell in the reception. The room we were given wasn´t great, there we three beds, the paint was all peeling off the walls and it was freezing cold. The guy had said it wasn´t in the Lonely Planet otherwise it would be much more expensive. We think it´s not in the guide books because it´s grim! The guy also managed to sell us a tour of Lake Titicaca and the Islands for the following day and a bus ticket to La Paz so he didn´t do too badly!!
The next day (Sunday) we were up early and leaving the hostel at 6.50am. Lake Titicaca is one of the worlds highest lakes sitting at almost 4000m.a.s.l. and was our destination for the day. We were given a transfer to the boat dock where we got on a relatively comfortable boat to take us out to the Islands. We travelled for about 25 minutes until we reached some floating Islands belonging to a community of people called "Uros". The Uros people had begun building these islands when they escaped the Incas and Collas on the main land. The islands were really fascinating and made from the floating reed beds. We were given a demonsatration of how these people make their islands; they would use the root as the floating base and tie all of the beds together using big stakes and rope. Many layers of reed would then be placed on top to make the island stable enough to live on. The number of islands is always changing. At the time of our visit there were 40 islands but if a family were to fall out, they had a huge knife capable of cutting the island in half! We had the oppurtunity to explore the isalnd (which wasn´t very big) and then we had a ride in one of their man-made reed boats to another island. The boat ride wasn´t included in the price of the tour and neither was the entertainment that we recieved from the Uros children on the boat!! They duefully held out a hat when they had finished singing twinkle twinkle little star and a few other songs in their native language. When we arrived at the next island about 15 minutes later we were pretty much told to get straight back on the boat as we were heading out to another island. The Uros people sang fairwell songs to us and also gave us a necklace!
The next stop was the natural island of Taquilie where we met another community of people. We had been told that we could buy lunch on this Island, the reality was, we were taken to a community house and given an option of Trout or Omlette! We had lunch outside overlooking the lake, it was really pretty. Afterwards the people of this community showed us a traditional dance and then we had to join in with them. It was fun although all of the lads seemed to bottle out! After that it was a walk to the village square which was interesting although i couldn´t help thinking that this whole island was set up for tourist purposes. It was quite surreal.
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