Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Rich & Alli's Travels
We arrived in Puno on the edge of Lake Titicaca, the world's highest navigable lake at nearly 4000 metres high, last night at 8pm. When the sun goes down the temperature drops to near freezing due to the altitude, but in the day it's hot enough to tan.
Luckily our hostel organises day trips, buses over the boarder, as well as change money, so this morning we took a trip to the floating reed islands before tomorrow when we head off to Copacabana, Bolivia.
The reed islands are floating islands on Lake Titicaca, made by laying layer after layer of reed on top of each other, and by renewing the top layers as the bottom ones rot. This means every step is pretty springy.
The Uros Indian people who populate the island (although there are few pure Uros people left due to mixing with other Peruvians) moved there around half a millenia ago, as they were a peaceful people who wanted to escape from the Inca and other warring tribes.
They live on fish, duck and the reed itself (which we ate, didn't taste of too much, though the locals were laughing so they probably don't eat it at all and were stitching us up). From the reed, they not only construct the islands and their houses, but build boats and trinkets to sell to tourists, as well as apparently eating it.
We assumed the men were out fishing, as the islands were mostly inhabited by women and children, all in traditional dress to welcome the boat-loads of tourists who travel there every day.
After the guide gave us some information on the Uros and the islands (including that the reed is good for fortifying your t***, but we assume he meant teeth), we bought some handmade necklaces with Inca designs (we're proper travellers now!) and then some of the children took us to a neighbouring island on a reed boat.
There are about 45 islands in total, though only a few are visited as some people believe if you take their picture you take their soul!
A great experience, and the people are so warm and friendly. All the women were very big, which apparently is a traditional Uros thing, but we also put it down to the fact you can't exercise on these little floating, springy islands. The kids were really cute as well, which they use to their advantage by getting you to buy postcards and hand-drawn pictures of their family. Still, it was worth the 1 Sol (about 17p) to see the smile on this young lads face, before he ran off forgetting to even take the money.
Peru is fantastic and we've seen loads of amazing things, met some great people, and loved every minute (well apart from the altitude sickness, toilets on the Inca trail which were stinky, dark holes in the ground, and e-coli that we think we've contracted about three times!). We avoided the guinea pig, though Rich tried Alpaca (basically a small llama) the other day. Very tasty.
Tomorrow we leave Peru and head off to Copacabana, Bolivia. Thinking of pushing the boat out and getting a honeymoon sweet for a staggering $32.
- comments