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An overnight bus took me to Puno, on the coast of Lake Titicaca, where the hostal owner kindly waited at 4am at the bus terminal to pick us up and take us to sleep for two hours before hopping on a ferry to set off on a 2 day cultural tour of the islands of Lake Titicaca. This is considered the highest elevation lake in the world at 3808 meters and it's shared by Bolivia and Peru. About a 45 minute boat ride off the coast of Puno are the Islas Flotantes, or floating islands, which are home to a separate community of Uros people. This community of people, a hundred or so years ago, in an attempt to separate themselves from the hostile Aymara and Inca people, built their islands on the lake entirely out of reeds. The foundation of the islands is the roots and peat moss of the reeds about 3 meters deep, which are tied together with rope and then the Uros cut the tops of the reeds to lay them down in crisscross layers to make the ground more firm. Firm may not be the best word, as the island ground is soft and squishy and has plenty of give under your feet. It takes 3 weeks to a month to create an island, and there are 62 of them. The modern day Uros people survive on tourism, and because of this you do have the feeling you are on a floating Disneyland, but it is so different than anything I had seen that the overall enchantment was not lost on me. Despite tourism altering their means of earning, they are still born there, and live out their entire lives on the islands as they have been for hundreds of years. As the ferry boat pulls up to the islands, they form a welcome committee to wave and greet you as you arrive. A demonstration on how to create a floating island was given, should you ever decide to do this, and then we were given some peeled reeds to snack on. After I walked around and looked at the houses they live in, also made of reed. Our guide Quito explained that the dry season is paradise, but in the rainy season they have to rebuild the islands and houses with new reeds every 2 weeks as they rot away. In one house, about 8 by 18 feet big, a family of 5 to 7 live together for their entire lives, unless a child marries and builds their own house or until they die. For food they gather eggs from bird nests, fish for trout of which the lake is plentiful with, or trap ducks with a noose tied rope they lay out and wait for ducks to step in. The woman are skilled weavers, and the men craft beautiful boats from the dried reeds. They barter with their goods at the mainland for fruits and vegetables and anything else they need. The kids also visit the mainland to go to school, to which they row over to everyday. After a peaceful ride given by a husband and wife in one of the beautiful reed boats the men made, we said goodbye to the Uros and they sang songs to us as we pulled away in the ferry.
Three hours later we arrived at Amantani Island, less visited by tourists with a feeling of it being in it's own little world. Here we were paired up with our host families for an authentic overnight stay. My host mother was named Sabina, and we followed her up the path from the docks to her house. She has a husband and three adorable children, to which I became kind of attached to. They live in a small mud farmhouse with Sabina's parents and 4 sheep. We gave the family some fruit, and the children some candy and crayons which they loved. After arriving, we settled into our basic but clean rooms with thick Alpaca blanketed beds, and Sabina cooked us lunch. All typical meals in Peru have a first course of the best soup I have ever had. Quinoa soup is really popular and was fantastic, although after the 5 times in 2 days Im ready for some variety. After a nice main course of trout and rice, we were offered mate de moya which is a tea made from an herb that grows like a weed all over the place and has a mint taste and beneficial digestive properties. Jaime, Sabina's six year old son, showed me his homework. He is learning to write Spanish. They speak Quechua on the island, but it's not taught in schools only passed down through family members, not many people learn to write it I was told. Spanish is taught so they are all bilingual. Jesse, the four year old girl, gave me a tour of the house and I realized Sabina's family does well by Amantani standards as it was one of the few houses to have a small amount of wiring for electricity.
We took a walk up to the highest point of the island and watched the sun set. I met Bonnie, a woman who just happened to be a sommelier from Colorado, and we had great wine women conversation for a while. After we made our way back in the dark along the paths to the house, guided by Ronald the eldest of Sabina's sons, who stopped often to shine a small light on a big rock or river so that we did not trip. Back at the house we had some time before dinner so while Sabina cooked on her small fire stove, we played with the kids. They were fascinated by the camera, Jaime mastered it pretty quickly and became quite a good little photographer. Jesse mainly took pictures of whatever was at her eye level, like our knees, but seemed very happy with her skills. Louis peeled potatoes in the dirt whole of a kitchen with a wood fired that nearly smoked us out. Dinner was lunch repeated, but delicious and followed with more tea of moya. After dinner Sabina proceeded to dress me in a complete outfit of her traditional clothing, which was pretty comical, and we walked over to a building in the center of the village for dancing. We all danced together for about an hour and drank a cerveza before heading back to the house to sleep.
In the morning we woke up for a quick breakfast of crepes and moya tea, said goodbye to the family, and headed by boat to the next island of Taquile. Taquile is another culturally uncompromised village, like Amantani, but I found it even more peaceful and picturesque. A steep walk up brought us to the center of town where Quito explained some things about the culture. The island has remained uncompromised because despite the ability for anyone from outside the Taquile community to be able to move onto the island, an outsider would not be welcomed at all and basically banished so it is not desirable. The men and women are skilled weavers here as well, but the clothing that they wear is used to determine social status and matrimonial eledgibility. Men weave their hats, solid red is for married men, red and white is for single men, and children wear varied colorful hats. All men wear the same outfit, every day, black pants, white shirt, black vest and the hat. In addition, when married the wives make belts for their husbands that they weave with their own hair and knit purses to carry a bag of coca leaves around. Men, when married, knit the skirts that their wives wear.
We took a hike to the highest point in Taquile, a beautiful lookout point. Quito told us more stories there. During the dry season, to encourage it to rain, the people sacrifice frogs on top of the mountain by putting them in a box they can't get out of without water. The frogs start to make a lot of noise obviously after awhile, and they believe this "singing for water" urges Pachamama (Mother Earth) to make it rain.
We headed back down to the town, had a fantastic trout lunch overlooking the lake, and then took the boat back to Puno.
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