Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
We arrived in Puno around 9.30pm and we had an hour there before R + L were continuing straight to Cusco on the overnight bus. However, I thought it would be a good idea to break every travelling rule there is on my own, im generally quite a relaxed individual but i clearly decided my nerves needed a test. So having changed my bus ticked to Cusco to the following day I ended up paying upfront for a hotel and a tour to the floating islands without so much as a receipt. I was then ushered into a taxi for my free trip to the hotel (which may or may not exist) and was joined unexpectedly by 3 locals who also got in the taxi. It was a very nervous 10m taxi ride across town at night, and i spent the entire journey with my fingers poised on the door release handle and ready to flee. Fortunately, i was delivered to the hotel in one piece and checked in. An hour or so later when reading in my room around 11pm i heard what sounded like a massive fight going on reception below.
Having heard a few horror stories of kidnappings and armed burglaries of hotels and hostels i started to fear the worse. However, after a rather nervous 5 minutes of looking for escape routes and generally winding myself up i plucked up the courage to open the door and look down 3 storeys to ground level where i was met by a normal hotel scene! Once my nerves were collected and i turned in for the night.
Next morning i anxiously waited (without so much as a receipt or company name) from 8.45am when my tour group were meant to pick me up until 9.15am when the finally did. We drove 5 minutes through town to the port and boaded a boat for the 25m journey to the floating islands.
There were 60 islands in total, all next to each other and roughly the same size as a 6 a side pitch. On each island were between 2-3 families. We were sat down and introduced to the President of the particualr island we were visiting. The islands themselves are made out of the reeds that occupy the shallow shores of the lake. The islands are around 3m thick in total, with the first metre made out of the roots of the reeds before 2m of criss crossed reeds are laid on top. The whole island is then joined to the lakebed by giant sticks to keep it from floating away. In the wet season it is necessary to apply a new layer of reeds to the island everty week to keep it raised above the water level. After exploring the island for a while and being offered all sortts of reed based novelty items we boarded the boat and headed to the next floating island which was host to 3 different restaurants and 2 shops before returning to land.
The islands themselves were fascinating but the tour unfortunately felt very touristy and to a large degree so do the islands themselves as they seem to have lost their traditions and sold out to tourism instead.
Back on land and having picked up some street food on the way i rushed back to the bus station, for the 7hr bus ride to Cusco.
- comments