Puno- Lake Titikaka

We took an over night bus to Puno and it was terrible. Freezing cold, no toilet and a bunch of spanish students talking the whole night and kicking my seat. We arrived in Puno with no sleep, not in the best of moods and freezing. How you judge a town depends alot on how you get there and first impressions of it. Neither of us liked Puno. We arrived at 6 in the morning, and the tour guide for lake Titikaka and the floating islands picked us up at 6:45, so we just had time to get to our hotel, freshen up (Ha!) and then we headed off again for the day.

A boat made of straw

Lake Titikaka is famous for being the highest lake in the world (over 4000m above sea level), and it also has these floating islands which people live on that are made of straw. No, seriously. There are cultures and tribes here that were untouched by the western world for thousands of years. Now these people make their living from tourism. The one thing about the lake is it's freezing. I was going to jump in, but a dipping my hand in made me realise that it wasn't going to happen any time soon.

A floating island

After visiting the floating islands, we went futher out in to the lake to another island called Taquile. There it was a 45 minutes hike to the only town, (nothing to us inca trail hardened travellers) were we stopped to have lunch. Problem is we had no money because we'd just arrived that morning. So while everyone is getting tucked into a delicious lunch, we're sitting there looking mornfully towards Puno where our money awaited us hidden inside an ATM. It was even tougher because we hadn't had anything to eat since the previous day, and after all that walking, we really were hungry.

So he boat back to Puno lasted over 3 hours, but it wasn't too bad. We had a pleasent conversation with 3 Americans which passed the time. They were of Indian desent, so they were able to give us a few tips about India, and what to do when we get there.

Lake titikaka

nina bonita