Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
On the road again…
On Saturday, November 10 we left Cusco in search of adventure in southern Peru. We boarded our massive bus and headed out, again taking switch-back after switch-back since apparently all roads in Peru are like that. I immediately put in my headphones and fell asleep, but after many hours and two snacks from Ursula we made it to Puno, the city on the edge of Lake Titicaca. I remember going through several extremely dusty but otherwise nondescript cities before reaching Puno, but I honestly couldn’t tell you how long it took us to get there since I was only conscious for about an hour of that time. We found our hotel, wandered the city for a bit and grabbed dinner before settling down for the night. It was pretty uneventful but we needed to get our rest for the morning considering we had a 6 am wake-up call in order to go see the Lake and the Floating Islands.
Bright and early in the morning we boarded our huge bus and attempted to make it through the skinny little streets of Puno to get to the docks on the lake. My first impression of the lake, without even being within 100 meters of it, was that it smells disgusting. And with my less than impressive smelling abilities you know it must smell really bad. The water was quite dirty and polluted as well. We boarded our double-decker boat and wandered out to the floating islands of Uros. We had to wander through some shallow water and stands of plants that looked like straw to get to the city of Uros. There were plenty of birds on the lake and some fishermen to dodge, but otherwise the lake was calm and quiet.
The floating islands were a sight to see! We docked the boat alongside the island and stepped out onto a thick bed of the straw-like plants we had seen on our way in. In fact, everything we could see on or around the island was made from this same plant—houses, decorations, seats, even boats. We first had a quick welcome from the island inhabitants and a demonstration on how the floating islands are made. Quick historical note: apparently the original creators of the floating islands were being forced off of their land and needed to find a way to live and sustain themselves—thus, they created their own land. The straw-material gathers on the bottom of the lake when it dies and during high winds chunks of it will float up to the surface, or so we were told. They tied blocks the size of one meter cubed together until they had an island and they scattered dried straw-stuff all over the top until it was very squishy (almost like walking on a trampoline but a little less bouncy). The whole process takes about a year and every few years the island needs to be recreated. And this is how they still construct them today!
The island was very impressive. There were a few families living on the island we visited and along with their houses and the big boat they had constructed a small pond for a fishery, various decorations and a guesthouse—meaning, yes, you can stay on the floating islands if you like. Their crafts were also very impressive, from textiles to carved gourds depicting lake animals to miniature boats made from the same straw-material. I wasn’t, however, impressed with the overall experience on the islands. The entire time I felt like they were trying to take us for all we were worth through the crafts and even a five minute straw-boat ride around the communal waters between islands—though they didn’t tell us this cost anything until we returned to the island.
We left the island around ten in the morning and headed back to our bus. We dodged venders of all kinds after docking the boat and finally made it back to our safe-bus-haven. I’ve never been happier to get back on a bus and away from people trying to sell me things. But then it was on the road again for four hours on our way to Arequipa and the gateway into Colca Canyon…
- comments