Day 12 SA Heights of Puno

Puno is our highest altitude for an overnight. Lots of people are noticing heavy breathing and did not sleep well, we however enjoyed a good night. Today we are heading out on lake Titicaca to visit two of the cultures which had developed in this area. One is a family community on an natural island and the 2nd on manmade islands.

After breakfast our "limousines" pick us up, which turn out to be bicycle "rickshaw". We all had grins on our faces as we cycled down to the shoreline, making the 2 km trip to the harbour a hoot! Lots of tour boats in harbour as it is low season for tourist. There is a coating of algae in the water. We saw one of our sister boats being moved over to the dock. See the photo below for a view of the "auxiliary" engine. The boats are all locally made and prove to be quite a slow cow. The steering wheel was a Toyota car steering wheel powered by a Mitsubishi truck engine.

The trip to the Taquile island was two and a half hours. To deal with the boredom we took lots of pictures, hence the colour sketch photos of Julie and Doug. The island of Taquile has been under cultivation for eons with all parts of it having been terraced for farming. Once on the island we climbed up a couple hundred meters to the island's plaza to view the communities wares, the climb had us all breathing hard due to the thin air. The community we were visiting has three main industries farming, knitting and weaving. Knitting is done by the men and weaving by the women. All the people on the island are in native dress whether this is for us tourist or just the way it is hard to say. The men wear knitted hats which indicate whether or not they are married also based on colour. These people are quite dark and relatively short in stature. The island is run as a democracy with an "administrator" being selected for a one year period with no pay. Once they have done their turn they are highly respected. We bought a knitted sheep as a christmas decoration. Once our group was done shopping we headed for lunch at one of the many small restaurants on the island, The menu was small with a choice of only two items, fish or omelettes. Both of us had the fish which was excellent. The fish are locally caught rainbow trout. The rainbow was introduced from Canada in the 1940's. The view from the restaurant was fantastic with the white mountain caps of the Bolivian Andes in the distances. The restaurants take turns hosting tourists groups. It is all very cooperative. Also of note are the toilets. No incoming water to the system, but luckily outgoing piping. Quinoa is very popular throughout Peru and again we got Quinoa soup that was excellent.

After Taquile Island we headed over to the floating islands of Uros where about 2000 people live on about 79 floating islands. These people live on the water, fishing, hunting of the waterfowl, and of coarse selling native crafts to the tourist. It was an interesting visit as we had a brief history of the people and their island culture from the head man of the island. The island we visited had 29 people on it. Some of the moms in the group seemed very young. Everything is made from reeds which grows on the lake; the island, the local boats (although they had the fibreglass one tied up behind the huts), the huts and the benches we sat on during the presentation. They also eat the sweet roots. The island we visited was for the tourist, it looked like the people take turns staying on it and putting on the show, but it does look like they still live on the lake as on our return trip we passed through the main village and it was still on island although a number of the structures were built on pontoons (clinic, temple etc.)

We were on shore just before dark (6 pm) and off to our evening dinner where we sampled Guinea Pig. Everyone thinks it tasted like chicken!

This was the second last day of the tour with G adventures as tomorrow we fly to Lima as our trip starts to wind down.

Photo Notes

1) Our Limo ride
2) Auxiliary Engine in use on our sister ship
3) Our "speed" boat according to our tour notes
4) and 5) Colour sketch of Julie and Doug
6) Taquile Island showing the terraces
7) Welcome arch on Taquile Island
8) View from lunch
9) Toilet on Island tank is installed but not hooked up (bucket outside for flushing)
10) view of floating "tourist" island
11 and 12) view on the tourist island - note native dress on the woman and girls (teenaged boys showed up with jeans, baseball caps and basket ball about half way through our visit)
13) GP for dinner - will Hammy ever forgive us?
14) the main floating village note the wind generator
15) the "clinic" for the village on pontoons

Cheers Julie and Dawson