Lake Titicaca and islands

October 24-27

Wednesday morning, after a first decent hostel/hotel breakfast (i.e. eggs were served! Not JUST bread, butter and jam) we headed to the docks of Puno in a taxi. As we were getting out of the taxi, we were immediately accosted by a whole host of boat operators who wanted to take us on a tour of the Lake Titicaca islands. I got a little irritated, as I didn´t like the feeling of 4 men closely following/surrounding us while we were trying to get away. I spoke to them sternly, in my best Spanish, and said that we did not want to join a tour group, but wanted to visit the islands independently. They then explained to us that they would just sell us tickets for the boat trips for 30 soles (return trip) and that we could then go off independently. Phew! I was relieved, but then felt a little badly that I was a little harsh with them.

Our plan was to first visit one of the Uros (floating) islands and then head to the island of Amantani, where we decided to spend 3 nights. It was up to the discretion of the captain of the taxi boat, as to which of the Uros islands we would visit (though I believe they were all pretty much the same, so it didn´t make much of a difference).

Uros islands:
We spent an hour on one of the Uros islands, where we learned about the lives of the families living on them and how the islands are made. When we got onto the island, Rakesh and I had to pay an entrance fee of 5 soles each. The others did not have to pay as it was already included in their tour package. It´s clearly one way the island makes some money.

The Uros islands were occupied by the Uros tribe in the past, but now are inhabited by Amarayas. They speak amaraya vs quechua. These islands are built out of reeds!! How crazy!! The reeds (or totoras) grow in abundance in the lake, fairly close to the main land. In fact, it only took us about 30 minutes to get to the Uros islands. The reeds are not only used to build the islands, but also to build their houses, boats, handicrafts, and even to provide vital nutrients to children. While on the island, the guide passed out a reed to each of one us so that we could taste one (or part of one, as they are pretty long). You peel them, kind of like a banana and chomp away from the top. They are quite bland in taste, but pretty edible!

The base of the islands consist of a mix of mud and reeds. Several blocks of mud are held together by tying rope around a thick stick of wood that are anchored on top of each block.  More reeds are then piled on the top, in a criss-cross fashion, to make the flooring!! The islands float, but stay put as they are anchored to lake bed, otherwise the winds would blow them out to the middle of nowhere!!!. The guide said that if the inhabitants of one island do not like the inhabitants of a neighbouring island,  all they have to do is move their island further away!! I´m sure that was just a joke, ofcourse. Since the reeds rot, they have to be replenished. The guide said that the islands last for about 30 days before they have to be reconstructed again!

The families survive mainly on fish and poultry. They (the men) hunt for the poultry and catch the fish, themselves. They thrive on tourism and the making/selling of their beautiful, though expensive, crafts!! We contributed a little more than just paying the entrance fee and bought a pillow case, with one of their Gods, Tumi, embroidered on it.

Island of Amantani:
The journey to Amantani was a slow 3 hour boat ride. We initially sat outside, but then the sun started to get to me. I moved inside the cabin, but then had to endure the horrid smell of petrol for the rest of the journey, yuck! Rakesh managed to find a little bit of shade and remained outside.

Once we arrived on Amantani, we were introduced to a local lady, Gladys, who would be our host for the rest of our stay. We had to pay another 5 soles each to enter the island, and then we began our ascent to  Glady´s house. It wasn´t that long before we got out of breath and I wondered, how do these locals walk up these hills (actually, mountain tops!) every day!!!

[One reason why we did not want to join a tour group, was the fact that local families are often exploited by the tour companies and are not paid as much as they would if one were to stay with a family independently. For 30 soles or roughly $15 a night per person, we were given a bed, and three meals a day.]

Glady´s house, just like every other house was next to a plot of farm land. Most of the houses on the island are built of mud, and some are painted in colour. Gladys lives with her husband, 13 year old daughter, Tanya, and her in-laws (her 2 older sons live on the mainland). There is no electricity on the island, but like some other houses, they had a solar panel to be able to light up the bedrooms at night. Our reason for staying on the island for 3 nights was to have a small idea of how the locals live. Clearly, life there is quite primitive, with no electricity, plumbing, running water, etc. We can´t complain about the candle-lit dinners we had every night!! All our meals were prepared by Gladys, who had to use a wood burning stove (they use eucalyptus trees as their source of fuel) and candle-light at night! Going to the bathroom, was very primitive (sorry for the details, but worth remembering). They had a western toilet bowl, but no seat and no flush! We had to manually flush the toilet using water that they kept in a large container on the side. As for showers...there wasn´t a way to shower!! Aaahhh!! We didn´t shower for 3 days!! At one point, I was thinking of having a bird bath, but the water was too cold...ofcourse, no electricity, no hot water!! There was no sink either! Instead, we used a small basin to wash our hands/face and to brush our teeth! After 3 days, it was nice to get back to known comforts and to finally have a shower!!

It was around lunch time when we arrived at the house. Gladys had already prepared lunch and we sat down to eat. For every lunch and dinner, we started off with soup. It was a variation on the same theme. Vegetables with quinoa, barley or corn. Sometimes, it contained potatoes. Next we had a bowl of rice, with  vegetables, including corn and potatoes. Once we had fries with a fish dish, and another time we had pasta. The market only occurs once a week, so the locals mainly consume vegetables and local grains. There are very few cattle on the island, which are mostly used for farming and not for consumption. So any meat/fish that they eat, comes from the mainland. As a result, Rakesh (and I too), were very happy to have mostly vegetarian food. I was happy, because I was getting a little tired of having meat all the time, especially since  I´m not used to eating meat/fish on a daily basis.

After lunch, we took a short nap. In fact, our naps are worth mentioning. Another reason for spending so much time on this island, was purely to relax and not do too much. After a month of traveling non-stop, we needed a break! As for naps, we took one after breakfast and then again after lunch!! We couldn´t believe how much we slept! We clearly, needed it. Two naps a day! Don´t think we´ve done that since we were babies!

Around 4:30pm we headed out, with Gladys, to the main square where we found the daily group of tourists and guide. Every day the island gets a group of tourists that spends only one night before heading out to another island. We knew that the group had all gathered at the square to begin a hike up to one of two peaks, Pachatata (father earth). The locals, continue to worship the earth (which I think is wonderful). On this island, they have a Pachatata peak and a Pachamama (mother earth) peak. In January, they hold a celebration/rituals at a site on each of these peaks, and practically all the inhabitants (and tourists, I assume) attend/partake. Gladys told us she would meet us, with her daughter, back at the square at 6pm. We started to ascend toward Pachatata with the group, but then broke away from them as we wanted to be on our own. It was a pretty tiring ascent up on a beautiful stone-paved path lined with houses at first and then just farm land divided by stone walls. Along, the way and closer to the peak, local kids and women sat to sell their crafts laid out in front of them. We got to the top just as the sun began to set. It was quite breezy and cold at this point, so we took in the sunset amongst the clouds, took a couple of snap shots and then began our descent back to the square. We needed to use our flashlights for the latter half of our decent as it was dark at this point.

Once at the square, many of the tourists had already gathered there. Like, us, they were all waiting and looking for their respective hosts. Since there were no lights around, but only a few flashlights, it was hard to determine which of the local women was our host. All the women wear the same outfits: a black shawl-type garment, which they often put over their heads to shield themselves from the sun, a black skirt and a white blouse with beautiful embroideries on the front. The black shawl also had beautiful embroideries. With their dark skin too, how on earth were we supposed to tell Glady´s apart from Maria, Lydia and so on and so forth. This lead out to a comical scene where other tourists began calling out such names as they attempted to locate their respective hosts. Finally, at about 6:15pm, it was Glady´s daughter, Tania, who came to pick us up. She was the one who spotted us first!!

Dinner at about 7pm, was similar to lunch, as mentioned above. I forgot to add that breakfast, lunch and dinner was also accompanied with a hot beverage consisting of either coca leaves, muña (a local wild herb), and/or freshly picked eucalyptus leaves, which we added to hot water. Rakesh and I fell in love with the muña, a herb that we had never had before!! Rakesh said its taste is a mix between Tulsi (Indian basil) and mint, in case that gives some of you an idea. Also, all our food was served in a beautiful unvarnished clay bowls, with a simple black design inside. The bowls looked like they were straight out of an Inca museum!

After dinner we went to bed at about 8:30pm. It was pitch black outside and with no lights around, other than in the bedrooms, it was hard to do anything. That´s why the locals go to bed early and wake up early. We seemed to be tired anyway, and so it wasn´t hard to fall asleep.

On day 2 and 3, we had a similar routine. Breakfast, nap, walk, lunch, nap, walk, dinner and then soon after went to bed for the night. The differences are that we took different walks to explore other parts of the island, on our walk before lunch. On one of these walks we were directed to go to see an ancient Inca site - basically one lonely large stone situated on a pebble beach. We had to ask several locals to find this site. We ended up on a beach a little further away, where we saw a farmer tending to his crops on the side, and two men loading trash onto their small wooden paddle boats (the latter was not the nicest site). We eventually found our way over to the Inca stones. On another walk, we ended up at one of the island´s small harbours, where we saw tons of women and men scraping up small rocks and hauling them in their sack over their back to the harbour, where other men worked manually to fix part of the wall and path. We found out later, that the husband of our host, Aquelino, was helping out with this work, too.

Our walks after lunch, however were somewhat a repeat of our evening walk on the first day. On both days 2 and 3, we climbed up to the peak of Pachamama vs that of Pachatata. By going up either one or the other peak, at around 4:30pm, we were able to catch the sunset, which was different each time. We probably overdid it with our photographs. The views were very impressive with the clouds (one day had more than others) and then the snow-capped mountain peaks in the far distance. One of these mountain ranges was on the Bolivian side! As we sat to take in the sunset, we had to keep reminding ourselves that we were not looking at a sea, but at a LAKE and that we were not on top of a hill, but on top of a mountain peak! At this point, we were at over 3,800m (or 12,500ft) and surrounded by a HUGE body of water!! It was definitely very hard to get our heads around this fact!!

On our last night, we asked to partake in one of the tourist events and that was to go see some live music. Little did we know though, that this would also involve us dressing up in local outfits AND dancing. I was dressed up with the  black skirt, white blouse and black shawl and Rakesh was given a thick and heavy woolen poncho type garment to wear. I couldn´t believe how heavy the the skirt was, too!! Glady´s husband played the drum in a four person band. Glady´s daughter came with us, and helped us with the dances. All three of us held hands in a circle and pretty much went round and round and round...woo, I definitely got a little dizzy at times. We also danced in larger circles, interlinking hands with the other tourists. It was a different and fun night.

On the 4th day, after breakfast we were accompanied by Tania to the dock where we got onto another small motor boat to visit the island of Taquille and then return to Puno.

A little about the local life: During our stay on the island we saw a lot of people, including young children and old men/women, carrying lots of various items on their backs. The women had the typical beautifully coloured woven fabrics that they use as sacks. They hauled anything from food to farmland products. The children go to school, though like Tania, they help out with chores outside of school. For instance, after a short day at school on Friday, Tania helped to haul manure to the other side of the island where her family helps tend to potatoes. We also saw people hauling farming tools. Life on the island is very traditional and  includes, working on the farms, making and selling crafts, and helping out with construction (e.g. fixing the dock). It was interesting to watch women and girls walking around with or without sacks on their backs while spinning their wool, too! Amazing! Some people own stores, where one can buy a few essentials. It seems that mostly the women do the cooking. With no electricity around and with people living a simple and traditional life, we definitely felt like we were living in the past.

Island of Taquile:
It took us an hour to get here from Amantani and we had 3 hours to visit the island. After paying another 5 soles each to enter the island, we walked along a stone-paved path toward the main square. Unlike Amantani, their were hardly any houses in sight along the path, until we got to the square. This island definitely felt smaller than Amantani and there are not as many inhabitants. While walking around the island, the lake seemed magical. It felt like we were looking at the mediterranean sea! Deep blue waters...yummy!! It was pretty much the same from Amantani, too.

Once we got to the square we grabbed a couple of avocado sandwiches and started to head up another path towards the peak. We ate our sandwiches in the shade and just as we were about to head back down to find the rest of the group, a french  girl that we knew from the group was heading up. Apparently, the way to the second dock, where we were to find the same boat, was in the direction we were heading in. It was the guide who had told her to go up this way. After walking uphill for a while, we got to the peak where there were some more ruins. It was at this point that we realized that the rest of the group was nowhere in sight. We did not take in the ruins that much as we attempted to figure out rest of the way to the other dock. With a little bit of panic, since we were slowly running out of time (we had to be back at the boat by 12pm) we finally managed to find our way, after asking a couple of the locals for directions. It wasn´t the straightforward path that the guide had told the french girl!! We got to the boat before many of the other tourists, who apparently, sat down for lunch in restaurants near the square and then they all took a different route to the boat. No wonder we couldn´t see them! They also missed the beautiful views we had from the peak. Blue waters, with various yellow coloured shrubs dotted all around the island.

The other difference between this island and the island of  Amantani, is the locals´ outfits. The men wear red hats, a white shirt and black pants. The women wear similar clothing to those on Amantani, though do not have as much embroidery on their clothing, and do not necessarily wear a white blouse.

Unlike on the Uros islands, the inhabitants of Taquile and Amantani speak quechua. The quechua that Rakesh and I learned in Lima and Cuzco, is quite different from that of these islands!

Lake Titicaca:
Just a bit about the lake. It lies at an elevation of 3, 812 m (12,507 ft) and is the highest navigable lake in the world!! Commercial crafts navigate this lake!! This might give you an idea of how large this body of water is! The lake is split between Peru and Bolivia.

Back in Puno: From Taquile it was another slow 3 hour boat ride to Puno. This time we sat on the roof along with other tourists and about 8 of the locals. Once in Puno, we returned to the hotel we had stayed in before we left for the islands. As with several similar situations during our trip, we were able to leave our large back-packs at the hotel during our island hopping. Also, for a small fee, we were able to use a bathroom in order to shower, etc. Ah, so nice!