Lake Titicaca is pretty famous for a number of reasons. It is one of the largest (by some measurements, the largest) lakes in South America, and the highest navigable lake in the world. It also boasts some pretty neat culture.
We got an early start with a bicycle-taxi race through Puno down to the harbor. We were going to be doing home stays on one of the remote islands in the lake, and since they don't have much chance to get outside supplies we went shopping to buy a few things for our hosts. A lot of this was cooking supplies like rice and condensed milk, but we also picked up a few small things for the kids.
The tour boats out onto the lake are almost entirely locally owned and operated. There are no big tour companies, it's mostly just individual people who have saved up enough money to buy (or rent) their own boat. Our boat was piloted by a young husband/wife team from one of the lake's many islands.
For awhile we just enjoyed the ride as we rode out deep into the lake. The water is extremely blue, probably due to a combination of the depth and the elevation, and the surrounding land is a fringe of mountains. Our first stop was at Taquile Island. Taquile is especially known for its textiles, and walking up the path toward the village on the island there are people trying to sell you different sorts of clothes and jewelry. One of the interesting things about the local people is that for them knitting is exclusively done by men, and weaving exclusively by women. There are a lot of very colourful designs, and we discovered that each of the island communities had their own unique designs and special codes for them. Men, for example, have bright striped hats, and the colours and arrangement of the stripes indicate where they are from and their marital status (among other things). We had a nice open-air fresh seafood lunch on the island, and checked out a textile shop where all the different families could sell their clothing.
After leaving Taquile it was on to Amantani, which is where we were going to spend the night. As we headed up towards the town we were met by the different families that were going to be hosting us for the night, and split up. After a brief stop at our new homes to drop things off we headed to the center of town which is a sort of communal area. "Town" is a bit of a stretch as a label as there's no real roads, and the buildings are just a loosely grouped patchwork of small farm plots and low buildings.
Considering the mud brick nature of the community it was a bit startling to find a pretty state of the art (if small) soccer facility at the town center. We got challenged to a game by some of the young men of the community, and after an intense match we ended in a 5-5 draw. They weren't content with that though, so they challenged us to another, shorter game, which ended 2-2. We decided to go sudden death to decide a final winner, and ultimately edged out the locals 3-2.
Afterwards some of the local boys brought some instruments over and we had a small concert / dance in the community center building. It felt a bit forced, since it's obviously just a show they put on for the benefit of tourists, but it was interesting to hear what their music is like and dress up in some of the traditional garb.
Next we went back to give our little thank you gifts and have dinner with our host family. There were 2 others from our larger group staying with the same family as me, and luckily one of them spoke enough Spanish for us to have a bit of a conversation over dinner with them. We'd jokingly been referring to the couple hosting us as Papa and Mama, but came to discover that I was actually like 5 years older than my Papa. They had 3 children, the eldest of which was 9 years old - a bit startling since the hosts were only about 24, but obviously in a small cut off community where everybody farms things work a little different.
There's no electricity, and because of the low numbers of livestock on the island most meals are vegetarian ones. It was an early night, since it's hard to do much after dark in a place with no electricity. A pretty intense hail storm hit randomly in the middle of the night which made sleeping a little hard since the roof above us was made of metal with nothing to insulate against the noise.
In the morning we had breakfast and headed out to help with some of the labor. We learned later that many of the people from our groups were asked to do a little farming, but in our case we were taken down to the small dock and helped lug heavy bags of cement back up to the community. Apparently in one of the households a teenager had gone out during the hail storm and collected a bucket of hailstones which was then used to make ice cream in the morning.
We had a bit more free time and the son of our little family took us on a walk around that part of the island so we could see a bit more. We ran into a few others from our larger group getting a similar tour, and just wandered around together.
We said goodbye to our hosts and returned back down to our boat to visit one last stop in the lake. Probably the most famous of the Titicaca islands is Uros, a community of around 50 floating islands. The islands are constructed out of layers of reeds, and are generally centered around an extended family. There are a couple islands with schools for small children, and reed rowboat "school buses" that ferry kids from the surrounding islands to school. It's certainly a unique culture, but it's really dying out quickly these days. The islands that are still there seem to largely survive off tourism now, and it sounded like many of the young adults go to Puno or other mainland cities to work, so it's likely just a matter of time until the community dies off.
It was now time to head back to Puno, and get on a bus to drive around the lake and out of Peru and into Bolivia. The normal route was closed down by protests, but the slight detour didn't effect the trip much. After around a 4 hour ride we were pulling into La Paz, Bolivia, which would be the final country of my trip.
We got an early start with a bicycle-taxi race through Puno down to the harbor. We were going to be doing home stays on one of the remote islands in the lake, and since they don't have much chance to get outside supplies we went shopping to buy a few things for our hosts. A lot of this was cooking supplies like rice and condensed milk, but we also picked up a few small things for the kids.
The tour boats out onto the lake are almost entirely locally owned and operated. There are no big tour companies, it's mostly just individual people who have saved up enough money to buy (or rent) their own boat. Our boat was piloted by a young husband/wife team from one of the lake's many islands.
For awhile we just enjoyed the ride as we rode out deep into the lake. The water is extremely blue, probably due to a combination of the depth and the elevation, and the surrounding land is a fringe of mountains. Our first stop was at Taquile Island. Taquile is especially known for its textiles, and walking up the path toward the village on the island there are people trying to sell you different sorts of clothes and jewelry. One of the interesting things about the local people is that for them knitting is exclusively done by men, and weaving exclusively by women. There are a lot of very colourful designs, and we discovered that each of the island communities had their own unique designs and special codes for them. Men, for example, have bright striped hats, and the colours and arrangement of the stripes indicate where they are from and their marital status (among other things). We had a nice open-air fresh seafood lunch on the island, and checked out a textile shop where all the different families could sell their clothing.
After leaving Taquile it was on to Amantani, which is where we were going to spend the night. As we headed up towards the town we were met by the different families that were going to be hosting us for the night, and split up. After a brief stop at our new homes to drop things off we headed to the center of town which is a sort of communal area. "Town" is a bit of a stretch as a label as there's no real roads, and the buildings are just a loosely grouped patchwork of small farm plots and low buildings.
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| This one was my home for the night |
Afterwards some of the local boys brought some instruments over and we had a small concert / dance in the community center building. It felt a bit forced, since it's obviously just a show they put on for the benefit of tourists, but it was interesting to hear what their music is like and dress up in some of the traditional garb.
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| My "little sister" for the day |
Next we went back to give our little thank you gifts and have dinner with our host family. There were 2 others from our larger group staying with the same family as me, and luckily one of them spoke enough Spanish for us to have a bit of a conversation over dinner with them. We'd jokingly been referring to the couple hosting us as Papa and Mama, but came to discover that I was actually like 5 years older than my Papa. They had 3 children, the eldest of which was 9 years old - a bit startling since the hosts were only about 24, but obviously in a small cut off community where everybody farms things work a little different.
There's no electricity, and because of the low numbers of livestock on the island most meals are vegetarian ones. It was an early night, since it's hard to do much after dark in a place with no electricity. A pretty intense hail storm hit randomly in the middle of the night which made sleeping a little hard since the roof above us was made of metal with nothing to insulate against the noise.
In the morning we had breakfast and headed out to help with some of the labor. We learned later that many of the people from our groups were asked to do a little farming, but in our case we were taken down to the small dock and helped lug heavy bags of cement back up to the community. Apparently in one of the households a teenager had gone out during the hail storm and collected a bucket of hailstones which was then used to make ice cream in the morning.
We had a bit more free time and the son of our little family took us on a walk around that part of the island so we could see a bit more. We ran into a few others from our larger group getting a similar tour, and just wandered around together.
 |
It was now time to head back to Puno, and get on a bus to drive around the lake and out of Peru and into Bolivia. The normal route was closed down by protests, but the slight detour didn't effect the trip much. After around a 4 hour ride we were pulling into La Paz, Bolivia, which would be the final country of my trip.
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