Southern Exposure

Monday, February 16

Not in my wildest dreams could I imagine that my 30th birthday will be spent so far away from home – 3,812 m (12,500 ft) above sea level, on the remote and one of the highest in the world, Lake Titicaca in Peru…

Our choice of hotel Helena made me very happy last night. The rooms were cosy, modern and clean, we had cable TV with CNN, BBC, Discovery Channel and National Geographic in English, wi-fi in the room, bike parking and a hearty breakfast all included in the rate.

The plan for today was to visit the floating islands on Lake Titicaca that are made of reeds and are the homes of hundreds of Uros people who have inhabited them for over 900 years. The Uros people retreated into the lake to escape conquest by the Incas. The reeds grow plentifully in the lake, so they started weaving the reeds and roots into islands. There are over 40 small islands that comprise quite a large (for drifting on the lake) community that looks like one big floating piece of land.

We took it easy in the morning and got out of the hotel around 9:30 am heading straight to the tourist office to find out how to get to the islands. There were standards tours to the Uros and the nearby islands that started at 6:45 am and ended at 5 pm, with 2.5 hour ride to and from the “nearby” islands.

Five hours on the boat was not my idea of a relaxing day, so we opted instead to hire a boat ourselves from the pier and just visit the Uros islands on a 2 hour tour.

During the ride to the islands we passed hundreds of reed bushes growing out of the water. We could spot locals piling up the weeds high and wide onto their tiny boats, an amusing sight.

The boat dropped us off at one of the islands where a head of the family living on the island told us about the history of the Uros people, and the construction details of the islands.

We learned that they have to “repave” the islands every two weeks, there is a school and a hospital on the islands, and they get their electricity from solar panels. The one thing we wished we have asked is what they do for toilet.

We were also informed that the Uros people are self sustained and that their only source of income is from selling crafts to tourists, which led nicely into guilting to buy their tapestries, wooden boats, and other things we didn’t want.

We hesitated a bit feeling obligated to support the community and opted instead for a cheesy $7 ride in a local reed boat to the “hub” island.

Once on the hub island, it was more of the same crafts selling, which we were not at all interested in. One of the cutest things I’ve seen were the furry hair decorations that local women put on the ends of their braids.

We snapped some more photos, and felt like we had seen enough of the Uros islands and culture and went back to mainland.

From the pier we decided to ride one of the three-wheel bicycle taxis. Using the environmentally friendly transportation should have made us feel good about ourselves, but instead I felt so sorry for the poor driver who was working extra hard moving two lazy gringos up the hill.

So we cut the ride short (but paid in full) and walked the rest of the way to the main street.

Back at the hotel we, as now customary, used all of our free time to work on the blog. Well, Matt did, and I took a birthday nap. 🙂

We had dinner at a nice restaurant which, as also customary, lacked in the service department and did not impress much with its cuisine. I tried one of the local soups, chicha (or something like that), a beef stew with vegetables, and king fish, both were very mediocre. Oh well, we’ll have to save space in our stomachs until Chile and Argentina.

Overall, we were a bit disappointed with Puno and Lake Titicaca. We were expecting a stunningly beautiful lake, like Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, but Puno was a dull and unattractive town, and the lake for the most part looked like any other piece of water we have seen before.