If you think your home requires a lot of upkeep, consider yourself lucky that you don't live on a sinking island made out of reeds. We visited the town of Puno, on the shores of the huge Lake Titicaca for really nothing other than to see the floating islands of the Uros people.
We boarded a boat with a hoard of other tourists and a too-jokey guide to see how these few hundred people still live on islands they build themselves out of the totora reeds that grow in the shallow waters of the lake. They've been living there for centuries, just piling more layers of reeds on top of their small islands as the ones below rot away, and apparently settling disputes between themselves by simply taking a chainsaw and cutting the islands in half straight down the middle.
While living there now seems to be as much more of a commercial pursuit than an interesting way to lead ones life, it's still pretty fun to bounce around on the springy surface, take a ride on a huge reed barge, and deflect offers to buy all kinds of trinkets made out of their primary building material. More thumbnails ...
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