Lake Titicaca

On Wednesday morning we left Puno early for our 2 day tour of the islands on Lake Titicaca. Lake Titicaca is the world's highest navigable lake at 3820m (12,500 feet), and tourists mostly visit for its wide vistas and its various islands.

The first stop on our tour was the floating islands of Los Uros, which are the only islands that many tourists visit. About 1000 years ago, the Uros people left the shores of the lake and built floating islands out of reeds to escape various competing cultures. At this point they pretty much only still live there because of the tourist industry, but its still pretty cool to walk on their "land" that is really a big natural raft and learn about how the islands are built and maintained. In fact, I was expecting the islands to be **so** touristy that I was pleasantly surprised when we got there--we were basically the only group visiting, the people were offering artesania for sale but not being overly pushy, and the islands were just a neat place to see. Here's a picture:

After Los Uros we continued for another 3 hours on the lake until we reached the island of Amantani, where we would be spending the night. We all got distributed to host families, and somehow we ended up in the town mansion--our house had a solar panel and thus electricity at night. After meeting our family and having lunch, we hiked to the top of one of the two hills on this island. Here we are:

In the evening they dressed us in traditional clothes and took us to the main hall to dance. It was of course totally cheesy and a silly tourist gimmick, but it was still pretty fun. I do wonder, however, when they actually do these dances for real.

Our family was super sweet--it was actually 2 brothers with their families living together, so 7 children in total. The men were stone workers by day and fisherman by night, so here they are at breakfast picking last night's catch out of the nets:

After Amantani, our last stop was the nearby island of Taquile. Since Taquile is an island you can visit on a day trip, it was way more touristy and it annoyed me. In comparison to Amantani it was overpriced and fake. So I could have done without the visit, but other than that I was happy with the tour. We met some cool people, and spending the night on the lake was definitely the best way to visit--more time on the islands and out-of-synch with the day trippers.

Thursday night we had dinner and drinks in Puno with some people we met on our islands tour. It was a fun relaxed way to end that segment of the trip. We didn't end up "seeing" much of Puno other than a couple restaurants and the bus station, but I still liked it well enough--aside from the 1 street of tourist restaurants and bars, it was clear that it's a city where real people live, a working city more than anything else.