Puno, Peru, South America

I went on a tour of Lake Titicaca and a couple of islands today, and it was only okay. I got picked up at 6:40am and we made the rounds to pick up the rest of the group from their hotels and then headed over to the port. We got on a tourist boat, there were about fifteen of us, and we headed off into the lake. We had a guide who spoke English and Spanish, so he would speak to half the group in Spanish first, and then translate for us in English. It was fine for the most part, but I think we would have gotten a lot more information if it had just all been in one language.

It was about an hour ride to the first island of Uros. This is a community made up of 80 islands floating on Lake Titicaca. The islands are manmade our of reeds that are pulled from the lake. They build these islands that can float for up to 30 years, which is pretty impressive. The island we visited had four small buildings, also made of reeds, and one of them was the kitchen. In the other three buildings, five families lived and shared this really small island.

Because there are 80 islands, and it would be unfair that all the tourists go to one island, they rotate. Each island only gets tourists visiting for two days per year. This means that they want money for everything. The “mayor” of the island gave a little speech in his language that was then translated into Spanish by our guide, and then he wanted money. They then split up the Spanish speakers from the English speakers and sent the Spanish speakers on a little boat ride with the “mayor”. He gave them some information in Spanish on the boat trip and then when they returned, the few of us English speakers went on a ride. Because there were so few of us on the boat, all the children decided to come for a ride as well. They were incredibly annoying.

The kids were really dirty, which made no sense to me because they live on a perfectly clear lake, so they could bathe whenever they want. They all had huge snots coming out of their noses, and all they wanted to do was jump around on the boat and climb all over us while they were fighting each other. At one point they started singing (I think) and after about five minutes of cackling, they all wanted money as well. The “mayor” didn’t speak any english, and he didn’t even speak to us in Spanish, so we didn’t get any of the information that the other group got on their boat trip. We then had to pay the “mayor” 10 soles for this miserable trip. It was not a highlight of my day.

After I got off the boat, I couldn’t wait to get back on our tourist boat and get the heck off this island. It was another two hours in the boat before we got to Taquile island, which was a much better part of the day. It’s a big, natural island, that about 2,000 people live on. There is a lot of farming there, and a few restaurants for tourists. We hiked up the hill to our restaurant and you could really feel the altitude. The lake is at about 4,000m (13,000ft), so we walked pretty slowly to get up to the restaurant all together.

We had a good lunch, and the owners of the restaurant explained a lot of the local customs to us. It was really interesting to see and hear how these people live in their normal lives. After lunch we headed further up the hill to the main square in the town, which was nothing too impressive. It did give a nice view over the lake to Bolivia though, so that was nice. We then had a 40 minute walk down to the other port on the island where our boat was waiting for us. It was a really pretty walk and gave me a chance to meet some nice people who were on my tour.

We had another 2.5 hours on the boat to get back to Puno, so it was a pretty long day of traveling all together. They do this as a two day tour as well, where you can stay on the island with a family, and I think that would be a much better option. Much like the Colca Canyon tour, this involved way too much traveling time, for not enough sight seeing.

I got back into town, grabbed some dinner, and now I’m just relaxing at the hostel. I had to switch rooms because my bed was really uncomfortable last night, but my new one is 10 times better. I’m taking tomorrow as a planning day, and a relaxing day. I need to figure out what my itinerary is going to look like for the next two weeks. I have to be in Santiago, Chile by 1 November, so I have less than two weeks to get all the way through Bolivia. I think it’s possible, but I need to try and figure it out so I’m a bit more confident before I hit the road. Also, tomorrow is NFL Sunday, so that’s a bonus!