Day „6“ – Lake Titicaca

We started our trip to or better on the Lake Titicaca at the harbour of Puno. We went on a boat and I have to admit that first I was really disappointed because the Lake Titicaca was really dirty. That explained why the people from Puno are saying that is not the Lake Titicaca it is the Lake Pipi-caca. But well that is right nearby the coastline of Puno. It smells bad and looks dirty.

But when you leave this behind, the Lake becomes cleaner and cleaner and then you are impressed. First we visited artificial islands made of floating reeds where the Uros are living. The Uros are the original habitants of the Lake Titicaca. They are living on approximately 40 artificial islands.

We only visited two of them, but that’s enough to get an impression of the life of the Uros. On our first stop we were talking to the Uros on the island and they explained how they are living, how they are constructing their island and they gave us an opportunity to visit their “house” and so on. It was really great and interesting. Of course the Uros have to earn some money as well. So they are doing a lot of art work and want to sell these things of course to the tourist. Well yes we had to buy something and support them. The Urus have to pay the school for their children. The school is located at the main land.

Anyhow the Urus on their island is living from eating the reeds. The reeds have a white end which is eatable. I tried it and it doesn’t taste too bad. The reeds as well contain a lot of water, so the Urus are eating this plant the whole day because it contains nutrients and fluids.

Moreover they are eating fish and bird eggs. Normally one family (with grandparents and so on) is living on one island. The island is artificial and constructed with reeds and earth. The island is attached with a rope to the ground of the Lake, so they can’t float away when it’s stormy weather.  As well the houses are constructed with reeds. They have many layers to keep out the humidity.

As a tourist you could book in a hotel on one of the Island. They have electricity aggregates, so you actually could have light in the night time but that’s all of luxury what you will have there.

After this interesting and really cheerful visit on the artificial island we went further south with the boat to the Island Taquile, which isn’t artificial and which is really big in comparisons to the other islands.  The islands still belongs to Peru but if you go further south, you will find yourself in Bolivia. But this country I will hopefully visit soon.

On the Island Taquile we had a really great walk with an awesome view on the Lake Titicaca. We were walking in a slow pass because it was very hot and the altitude of almost 4.000 m makes you even more tired. The main village of Taquile is located on 3.950 m.

There you can buy many traditional souvenirs and watch the habitants in their traditional clothes. Really interesting in their culture of showing if they are married or single. So they have hats in different colors or if they are going out with someone they are demonstrating this with wearing their hat to one special side.  This kind of tradition would make life much easier in Europe…

We had a small lunch on the island before we went back to the boat and then back to the mainland in Puno. There we only relaxed from the day, which was great, but from the sun and the walking tour on the island we were really tired. Of course we were happy with our new impressions there:

On our next day we were only planning to get our plane to Lima in the morning but like many times in South America it came differently…