Floating Islands and freezing my butt off!
Trip Start
Feb 16, 2009
1
25
44
Trip End
Sep 14, 2009
Puno, Puno, Peru
Friday, June 12, 2009
Nevertheless the cold did inspire me to hate such a decision, and with nothing else in town to do (apart from finding ourselves a tasty vegetarian restaurant and some good coffee), we were cold, tired and bored for a couple of days.
Anyway, about these islands... made up of a group of around forty islands, these are inhabitated by the Uros people, and are man-made, consisting of a few metres of reeds... wonderfully spongy to walk on i must say.
The only way to visit these is via the booking of a tour... and i had previously been warned that the peruvian side of the lake is a bit of a tourist trap.. and i have to admit that my friend was right. Whilst the islands were interesting, and of course there are not a whole lot of opportunities to see such a thing in the world, so i was glad to see them i suppose. But at the end of the day the tour itseslf was a bit touristy, and immediately after getting an explaination about the island and the people and their way of life, the people straight away uncovered their handicrafts and were were expected to buy something! Our tour also consisted of a visit to a neighbouring island, Taquile Island, where we had to walk from one side to the other, stop and have lunch (not included in the tour price of course however it was a set menu with no other option...), before getting back on the boat for the two and a half hours it took to get back to Puno. All in all it was a long long day.
Needless to say, we were actually organised enough to have booked ourselves a bus to get right on our of that town early the following day. We were finally headed for a town of only 2300 metres, with a little bit of warmth for our bones, Arequipa.
