Lake Titicaca and Puno

Lake Titicaca!

Greetings faithful readers! I am sorry that I have not updated in a few days. It has been a few crazy packed days and I have not had time to get to a computer- despite my lack of computer time, my camera has been taking lots of pictures. I believe I left off just about to leave Cusco headed for Puno. We made our bus and traveled through the night to get to Puno at 5:30 in the morning. We didn´t have a place to stay so we asked a cabbie to drive us to a hostel. We arrived, at the cabbies choice of hostel, checked in and promptly passed out. I am still having a hard time believing the deals in this country- we checked in at 5:30AM and checked out the following night at 6PM and we were charged 35 soles (US equivalent of about 12 dollars) for our stay. I mean, we weren´t staying at the Ritz Carlton, but we had our own room and hot water. Amazingness. Anyways, after sleeping a bit we went to the docks to try to get on a boat to tour some islands, but all of them had left earlier in the day so we walked a ways over to the Yavari. This is a ship docked on lake Titicaca and was actually carried over the Andes mountains by men and mule way back in the day. I won´t bore you with details, go here if you are interested in the ship´s history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yavari_(ship) We did a quick tour of the boat then headed back into town.

The Yaravi

Anyways, we (more so me) were feeling the effects of riding a bus all night and not sleeping so we called it early and went back to the hostel to catch up on sleep. The next day we jumped on a boat tour that went to a few islands on Lake Titicaca. The first stop was on Uros Islands. These islands are not made of land- they are actually floating pieces of reeds and reed beds that the Uros people made. Yes, these people live on islands that they made. Insane. We got to tour two of the islands and I can assure you they are floating. These people live completely off reed´s and what the lake offers. Unfortunately, tourism seems to be changing the ways these people live. I think they don´t live as traditional as they used to 100 years ago, but alas they still live in reed houses on islands they built. Pretty incredible. If you want to learn more there´s a little more reading here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Titicaca#Uros

Uros



The reed floor of the island

The next stop was the island of Taquile. This was a 2.5 hour boat ride out from Uros. We had lots of time to meet the other people on the tour and take in views of the lake. Once we arrived at Taquile we watched (and even particpated) in a traditional dance of the people who have inhabitated the island for 100´s of years. I got to dance with a really old lady who was about 2 feet shorter than me. After that, we all had a trout lunch, which was amazing, then headed back to the boat. Taquile was really great because it is just a bunch of people living on the island- there are no resorts, no clubs, nothing like that. The only thing that seemed to have popped up due to tourism was 2 restaurants, other than that it was a bunch of farms and houses. I really enjoyed Taquile and would definitely recommend checking it out if you are ever down in this area.

On Taquile

Taquile

The top floor of the boat

After the trip we raced back to the hostel, grabbed our packs, and got to the bus station. We drove through the night to Arequipa and that is where I am updating from. Alright, that about does it for the last few days. Look for another post from Arequipa here. Adois!

Me and Jenny on our way back to Puno from Titicaca